space // tagged articles
Latest Posts
China’s Mars rover landing closes another major gap with U.S. space program
The successful landing of the Zhurong rover on the Red Planet marks a major milestone in the China National Space Administration’s efforts to catch up to NASA.
More Posts
China launches core module of new space station, to be completed by end of 2022
The first of 11 launches to construct the Chinese Space Station went ahead without a hitch today. If all goes according to plan, the CSS will be fully operational by the end of 2022.
Chinese capsule returns to Earth with Moon rocks
The Chang’e-5 probe has landed in Inner Mongolia with a cargo of lunar rocks and soil.
Chinese lunar lander reaches Moon, on mission to make China third nation to bring back rocks
The Chang’e-5 lunar lander touched down on the Moon today, and will spend two days collecting two kilograms of rocks before returning to Earth in mid-December. If it is successful, China will become the third nation to retrieve lunar samples.
New funding values Chinese private satellite company GalaxySpace at $1.2 billion
Communications satellites are a big business — investors have made a unicorn of a Beijing-based satellite manufacturing startup.
China launches final satellite for BeiDou, its GPS competitor
China today completed a decades-long project to construct an alternative satellite positioning system to the U.S.–controlled GPS.
The quiet, public failure of China’s new Long March rocket
On March 16, China launched the first Long March 7A, a rocket that could become the main vehicle for sending large communications satellites toward geostationary orbits, around 36,000 kilometers above Earth. But ninety minutes after the launch, a terse news release from Xinhua confirmed that the flight had suffered an anomaly and the mission failed.
Destination: Mars — China’s biggest rocket blasts off again
After a two and a half year delay, China’s Long March 5 rocket is now flying again, after a successful launch on December 27. The rocket will be critical for China to send a lunar to the Moon and a rover to Mars next year, and to set the China Space Station into orbit in 2022.
A Chinese economic zone in space
China has grand ambitions in outer space, including becoming the second country after the U.S. to land a Mars rover in 2020, operating a full space station by 2022, and building a research station on the Moon by approximately 2030. Officials added one more ambitious goal last week: To set up a $10 trillion Cislunar Economic Zone (地月空间经济区 dì yuè kōngjiān jīngjì qū), or Moon-based economic sector, by 2050.
China’s space program is taking off
In 2018, China conducted 39 orbital launches, more than any other country in the world. However, China has a long march ahead to catch up with the U.S., as Chinese official space exploration only began in earnest around the turn of the 21st century.