China's Space Program News Thread
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by78
General
by78
General
A fun fact: South Korea will be using a deep-space tracking and control system imported from China for its upcoming . The system features a dish antenna 35-meter in diameter that weighs 100 metric tons. It was under and will be used to track and control the lunar orbiter. Also interesting is that the orbiter will be launched using a Space-X Falcon-9 rocket, so this is a true multinational mission.
The first two images below show the imported reflector antenna installed in Yeoju, South Korea. The last three images show the same systems installed at a Chinese tracking facility for China's Chang'E lunar missions.
South Korean tracking facility:
Chinese tracking facility:
The first two images below show the imported reflector antenna installed in Yeoju, South Korea. The last three images show the same systems installed at a Chinese tracking facility for China's Chang'E lunar missions.
South Korean tracking facility:
Chinese tracking facility:
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As of June 29, 2022, the Tianwen-1 orbiter mission has been in orbit continuously for 706 days, and has obtained medium resolution image data covering the whole planet of Mars. All scientific payloads have realized their global exploration of Mars. Both the Tianwen-1 orbiter and the Zhurong Mars rover have completed the established scientific exploration missions.
Tianwen-1 mission was approved in January 2016 and successfully launched on July 23, 2020. After a 202 days deep space flight of 475m km, the probe rendezvous with Mars on February 10, 2021, successfully implemented the capture braking and entered the Mars orbit. After 3 months' detailed survey of the pre-selected landing area, the Mars landing was successfully carried out on May 15, 2021. On May 22, the Zhurong Mars rover successfully sailed onto the surface of Mars and began patrol exploration.
On August 15, 2021, the Zhurong Mars rover successfully completed the established scientific exploration mission for 90 Mars days, continued to carry out the extended exploration mission, and has accumulated 1921.5 meters on the surface of Mars. Affected by the severe cold and dusty winter weather in the landing area, the rover will enter the winter sleep mode on May 18, 2022 as designed. The resident area of Zhurong will enter early spring season at around December 2022. When the environmental conditions improved, it will wake up and resume its exploration of the Mars surface.
The orbiter has circled 1344 times around Mars, accomplished a global Mars surveillance coverage. Now the status of the rover is fine. CNSA will continue to carry out global remote sensing exploration, and carry out extended technical tests at an appropriate time to carry out advanced technical verification for relevant tasks.
After nearly two years of flight and exploration of the Tianwen-1 mission, 13 scientific payloads configured for the Mars rover and the orbiter have obtained about 1040 GB of original scientific data. After receiving and processing on the earth, the standard scientific data products have been submitted to the scientists' team on a monthly basis for analysis and interpretation. Relevant scientific achievements have been successively published in academic journals domestic and abroad. These scientific data will be opened to the scientists around the world at an appropriate time. All scientists are welcome to actively apply for cooperational research and jointly promote the human exploration of the universe.
In the spirit of open and shared cooperation, CNSA actively promotes cooperation with international space agencies and scientific communities, shares its orbital data of the Tianwen-1 Orbiter with NASA and ESA, and carries out collision warning cooperation. The Zhurong Rover and the Mars Express orbiter of the ESA carried out data relay communication experiments to achieve China-EU cooperation in Mars scientific data relay. Tianwen-1 orbiter and Mars Express orbiter carried out a joint occultation observation of the sun and scientific research on solar wind with astronomical observatories in Russia, Germany, Italy, Australia, South Africa and other countries during the period of solar eclipse on Mars. These cooperation have achieved abundant results, enriched human knowledge and made positive contributions to the construction of a community of shared future for mankind in the field of aerospace science.
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CNSA completed 20 rocket launches during the first half of year 2022.
China always schedules less launch missions in the first half of a year because there is a one month long national Spring Festival holiday break between January and February when all the engineering activities were suspended by tradition.
CNSA launched 11, 17, 18 rockets during the first half of year 2019 to 2021. It's a new hitting record of CNSA's aerospace activities in 2022.
By now there are 20 more launches scheduled for the second half of year 2022, including two Laboratory Module of the China Space Station, Tianzhou-5 cargoship, Shenzhou-15 crewship, a new solar observatory satellite, Zhng Heng earthquake electromagnetic surveillance satellite, Einstein deep space X-ray burst observatory satellite, near earth multiple-asteroids tracker satellite.
China always schedules less launch missions in the first half of a year because there is a one month long national Spring Festival holiday break between January and February when all the engineering activities were suspended by tradition.
CNSA launched 11, 17, 18 rockets during the first half of year 2019 to 2021. It's a new hitting record of CNSA's aerospace activities in 2022.
By now there are 20 more launches scheduled for the second half of year 2022, including two Laboratory Module of the China Space Station, Tianzhou-5 cargoship, Shenzhou-15 crewship, a new solar observatory satellite, Zhng Heng earthquake electromagnetic surveillance satellite, Einstein deep space X-ray burst observatory satellite, near earth multiple-asteroids tracker satellite.
I believe SAR is not a real time technique typically. It is done by either moving the imager while the target is stationary, or the target while the imager is stationary (or near stationary in terms of relative velocity i.e. velocity of imager >>> velocity of target such as spacecraft vs. ship) to achieve a series of time separated radar returns (non-imaging) that are then stitched together to form the image.
If both imager and target are in high speed relative motion such that neither can be regarded as totally stationary, then the algorithms will not be able to correctly interpret the images. That requires special techniques.
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