China's Space Program News Thread

[escobar]

Xiaoxiang-1 is the Chinese first commercial satellite for science experiments and is expected to operate in orbit for 6 months to 1 year. the satellite is also the first one developed by Hunan province. Xiaoxiang-1 (XX-1), developed by the private, Changsha-based Spacety Aerospace Co, is a 6-unit cubesat with a mass of 7.49kg designed as a pathfinder for a commercial ‘Mini-Hubble’ optical telescope to be launched next year. It marks a significant step forward for the commercialization and industrialization of China's scientific satellites. Multiple experiments will be conducted after the satellite enters orbit, including navigation signal augmentation, new satellite-borne computer tests and high-precision optical image stabilization.

 

[sanblvd]

This is all excellent news, China is testing X-ray pulsar propulsion, Electric Emission propulsion, ion propulsion, they are useless for satellites or spaceships in close to earth orbits because the power output is too low.

But those propulsion they almost never run out of fuel, so that means for long term deep space exploration missions they are excellent.

I see China doing all paving way forwards towards space exploration. this is excellent development, it will benefit all of us in the long term.

 

[Quickie]

What happened to the EM drive? If it's been proven to work, it would be as big a news as making a breakthrough in fusion power.

 

[escobar]

The Lishui-1 satellites, designed by the Zhejiang LiTong Electronic Technology Co., Ltd, are commercial remote sensing satellites. The company plans to build a constellation of up to 120 commercial satellites

 

[escobar]

China successfully launched a Yunhai-1(01) meteorological satellite. The satellite is mainly designed for detecting environmental elements in the atmosphere and ocean, the space environment, disaster prevention and reduction, and scientific experimentation.

 

[Zool]

What happened to the EM drive? If it's been proven to work, it would be as big a news as making a breakthrough in fusion power.

It was proven to work with a recent document leak, but the physics behind it are still not totally understood and many are waiting for the research team to publish their detailed findings officially:

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FIONA MACDONALD
7 NOV 2016
The results of NASA's tests on the 'impossible' EM Drive

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, and they reveal that the controversial propulsion system really does work, and is capable of generating impressive thrust in a vacuum, even after error measurements have been accounted for.

The

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has made headlines over the past year, because it offers the incredible possibility of a fuel-free propulsion system that could potentially get us to Mars in just

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. But there's one major problem: according to the current laws of physics, it shouldn't work.

The issue is the fact that the EM Drive defies

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, which states that everything must have an equal and opposite reaction. So, according to Newton and our current understanding of the world around us, for a system to produce propulsion, it has to push something out the other way (in space, that's usually combusted rocket fuel).

But the EM Drive works without any fuel or propellants at all. It works by simply bouncing microwave photons back and forth inside a cone-shaped closed metal cavity. That motion causes the 'pointy end' of the EM Drive to generate thrust, and propel the drive in the opposite direction.

Despite

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, the drive remains controversial. The bottom line is that, on paper, it shouldn't work, according to the laws of physics. And yet, in test after test, the EM Drive just keeps on working.

Last year,

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got involved to try to independently verify or debunk the EM Drive once and for all. And a new paper on its tests in late 2015

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, showing that not only does the EM Drive work - it also generates some pretty impressive thrust.

To be clear, despite

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that a NASA paper on these tests has passed the peer-review process, the version that's been leaked hasn't been published in an academic journal. So, for now, this is just one group of researchers reporting on their results, without any external verification.

But the paper

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, after error measurements have been accounted for, the EM Drive generates force of 1.2 millinewtons per kilowatt in a vacuum.

That's not an insignificant amount - to put it into perspective, the super-powerful

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generates force of

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, an order of magnitude more than the EM Drive.

But the Hall thruster uses fuel and requires a spacecraft to carry heavy propellants, and that extra weight could offset the higher thrust, the NASA Eagleworks team conclude in the paper.

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on the other hand, which are currently the most popular form of zero-propellant propulsion, use

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forward rather than fuel. And they only generate force up to

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- two orders of magnitude less than NASA's EM Drive,

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The NASA Eagleworks team measured the EM Drive's force using a low thrust pendulum at the Johnson Space Centre, and the tests were performed at 40, 60, and 80 watts.

They were looking for any sign that the thrust could be a result of another anomaly in the system, but for now, that doesn't appear to be the case.

"The test campaign included a null thrust test effort to identify any mundane sources of impulsive thrust, however none were identified," the team, led by Harold White,

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"Thrust data from forward, reverse, and null suggests that the system is consistently performing with a thrust to power ratio of 1.2 ± 0.1 millinewtons per kilowatt."

But the team does acknowledge that more research is needed to eliminate the possibility that thermal expansion could be somehow skewing the results.

They also make it clear that this testing wasn't designed to optimise the thrust of the EM Drive, but simply to test whether it worked, so further tweaking could make the propulsion system more efficient and powerful.

So where does this leave us with the EM Drive? Again, the results haven't been published as yet - although

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that we're getting tantalisingly close to that happening - so we need to take these leaked results with a grain of salt.

But they do offer further evidence that the thrust produced by the EM Drive is real. So it might be time to start trying to figure out how the system could work - and, more importantly, start testing the drive in space.

Thankfully that's scheduled to

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, with plans to launch the first EM Drive having been made

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.

And back in June, a team of researchers from Finland

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that the EM Drive could work without defying Newton's third law, by propelling photons as a type of exhaust - although that hypothesis has yet to be tested.

We're still a long way off understanding how the system works - or if it works at all - but a lot of brilliant minds are now seriously considering the possibility that we might have a way to get to space without rocket fuel. We're excited to see what happens next.

This link also has a small bit about Chinese efforts at the end, but no real specifics -

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[Quickie]

It was proven to work with a recent document leak, but the physics behind it are still not totally understood and many are waiting for the research team to publish their detailed findings officially:



This link also has a small bit about Chinese efforts at the end, but no real specifics -

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There seem to be so much of uncertainty since the claim was first made. You would have thought that the technology should have already been tested on experimental satellites where the final proof of propulsion can be made. Instead you only hear them testing the Electric Emission propulsion and Ion propulsion.

 

[escobar]

Shenzhou-11 detached from the Tiangong-2 space lab after two Chinese astronauts completed a record-breaking 30 days in space.

 

[Hendrik_2000]

Shengzou 11 return live broadcast

 

[KIENCHIN]

Shengzou 11 return live broadcast

Welcome home gentlemen and congratulatipns on a successful mission. Another step closer to achieving China's own permanently manned space station which I hope would be open to all who want to participate. How can we call the current one and an international space station when the most populous nation on earth representing almost 1/5 of humanity is barred from participating.