Tag: China

China successfully launches Chinese/French ocean research satellite

9:02 am

A joint Chinese/French ocean research satellite was successfully launched by China today using its Long March 2C rocket.

The leaders in the 2018 launch race:

30 China
17 SpaceX
9 Russia
8 ULA
7 Europe (Arianespace)

China now leads the U.S. 30 to 26 in the national rankings. Its 30 launches this year smashes its previous launch high of 20 successful launches, and suggests that China is going to come close to its predicted 40 launches for 2018.

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Pakistan enlists China to launch its 1st astronaut by 2022

8:54 am

The new colonial movement: Pakistan has begun negotiations with China to launch its first astronaut by 2022.

Plans are afoot to send Pakistan’s first astronaut to space with China’s help in 2022, the country’s Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry announced on Thursday, saying the proposal got a nod from the federal Cabinet at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan ahead of his maiden visit to China next week.

An agreement between Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) and a Chinese company has already been signed for the ambitious mission, Lahore-based The News daily cited Chaudhry as telling a press conference after Thursday’s Cabinet meeting. There’s no official confirmation of the project from Chinese officials yet.

Last December, Pakistan’s Air Chief Marshal Sohail Aman had also said that Islamabad will collaborate with China to send astronauts to space, Karachi-based ARY News reported.

There is zero doubt that Pakistan’s leaders started these talks after learning of India’s plans to launch its own manned mission in 2022. Unlike India, a religiously tolerant capitalist democracy, Pakistan (an Islamic dictatorship) does not have its own space capabilities. To compete with India it will need to hire someone else to provide the rocket and manned spacecraft.

China has said it wants to fly international visitors to its space station, expected to be in operation in 2022. This deal fits the needs of both nations, perfectly.

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Chinese smallsat rocket fails to make orbit

8:16 am

One of the handful of so-called private companies being used by China’s military to develop smallsat solid-fueled rockets, LandSpace, today tried to put its first satellite into orbit, and failed.

The satellite was for Chinese television, but I find the links to China’s military for this rocket too many to dismiss. I initially saw them as direct competition with the new smallsat rocket companies developing in the west, but I got suspicious when I found they all had remarkably similar names (LandSpace, OneSpace, Exspace, ISpace) and that all seemed to be using solid-fueled rockets, most of which were being launched from mobile launchers. Such rockets are almost always developed for military purposes.

These companies might be providing China some commercial services, but they are probably also aimed at giving its military a mobile orbital rocket that can do other things as well.

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China launches two GPS-style satellites

8:43 am

In launching two more GPS-style satellites with its Long March 3B rocket, China today also did their first test of equipment to be used in a parachute system designed to recover the rocket’s first stage.

The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) confirmed the mission to be a success four hours later, following direct insertion of the Beidou-3 satellites into their intended medium Earth orbits (MEO).

The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) which developed the Long March 3B rocket reported that data logging and active tracking equipment was placed aboard for tests to determine to altitude and timing for future parachute landings for boosters.

The trial phase of parachute booster landings is expected in 2019. Expended rocket boosters frequently land in or near populated areas downrange of Xichang.

It is about time. The article also included a short video showing the booster wreakage that landed near a town during a previous launch. For any nation to allow rocket stages crashing near habitable areas speaks poorly of that nation.

The leaders in the 2018 launch race:

28 China
17 SpaceX
8 Russia
7 ULA
6 Europe (Arianespace)

In the national rankings China leads the U.S. now 28 to 25. I must add that with every launch China is setting a new record for itself in its annual totals. Previously its highest total of launches in a year had been 20.

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China plans next Long March 5 launch for January 2019

9:19 am

The new colonial movement: China has begun the assembly of the third Long March 5 rocket for its next launch, now set for January 2019.

The article provides the most detailed information yet released about the failure during the rocket’s second launch:

The cause was determined to be damage to the turbopump on one of the two cryogenic YF-77 first stage engines, prompting a redesign of the structure and test-firing in Xi’an.

This is still somewhat vague, though it does confirm that the rocket engine needed a redesign.

Should this January 2019 launch go well, it will allow China to move forward on all of its ambitious space exploration plans, including the building of its own space station, numerous robotic missions to the Moon and Mars, followed eventually with manned missions to the Moon.

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An update on China’s Chang’e-4 lunar lander

7:36 am

Link here. Chang’e-4 is set to land on the far side of the Moon, sometime in December. The article provides some additional details, including information about the likely landing site in Von Kármán crater. It also notes that there are three launches planned at the spaceport prior to the December launch, and that any issue on any of those launches could delay Chang’e-4’s lift-off. .

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China launches smallsat

7:10 am

One of China’s claimed-to-be private companies, Expace, today launched a smallsat into orbit using the Kuaizhou-1A solid-fueld rocket. .

Exspace, like OneSpace and Ispace, is considered private by the Chinese. I find it interesting however that all these private companies have remarkably similar names, and all appear to be doing military work. Even if they get private financing from Chinese investors and their management is formed independent of the government, we should not be fooled. These are wholly owned and controlled by the Chinese government. They do nothing without its knowledge and support.

The leaders in the 2018 launch race:

26 China
16 SpaceX
8 Russia
7 ULA
6 Europe (Arianespace)

China has widened its lead over the U.S. in the national rankings, 26 to 24.

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Roscosmos head meets with Chinese

7:25 am

The head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, held meetings this week with China, discussing possible future space cooperation.

Russia can’t really afford to do much right now on its own, but it also wants to negotiate the best deal it can with anyone it works with in space. These discussions are therefore specifically designed to give Rogozin some negotiating leverage when he meets with NASA’s head Jim Bridenstine on October 10.

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Next Long March 5 launch delayed again?

10:18 pm

There are indications in the Chinese press that suggest the next launch of China’s largest rocket, the Long March 5, will be delayed from its present November launch into 2019.

An online report by People’s Liberation Army Daily, a military newspaper, reports Lin Xiqiang, deputy director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO), as saying at a press conference in Beijing on Wednesday that the Long March 5B will not make its planned test launch in the first half of 2019.

“Due to the failure of the launch of the Long March 5 remote launch vehicle, the first flight of the Long March 5B carrier rocket will be postponed. The specific implementation time needs to be clarified after coordination with relevant departments,” Xiqiang said.

The November launch was to put up a test communications satellite. Should it slip into 2019, this would likely also cause delays in the launch of China’s first lunar sample return mission, Chang’e-5 (originally scheduled for 2017), the launch of China’s first Mars planetary mission in 2020, and finally the launch of the first module of China’s space station, also set for 2020.

All this once again indicates that the problems with Long March 5 were very serious, and might not yet have been addressed, even with a redesign of its engines.

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