China's Space Program News Thread

[SciNews]

Long March-5 Y5 ready to launch Chang’e-5

 

[by78]

A paper on the "thrust transmission structure" of China's upcoming superheavy rocket (a.k.a. the 921 rocket). The development is in full swing.

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My technical Chinese is very limited in this area, so I'm not able to translate the paper. It does however have an English abstract.

 

[anzha]

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[escobar]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1329430877101830144

 

[by78]

Large mesh antenna designs for satellites. They have already been deployed on Beidou satellites, with sizes of 4m to 6m in diameter.

 

[broadsword]

What functions does the antenna to?

 

[by78]

A long exposure photograph of LM-5.

 

[by78]

Chang'e 5 spacecraft. It weighs 8200kg and has four parts: ascent stage, lander, return module, and the orbiter.

 

[taxiya]

A paper on the "thrust transmission structure" of China's upcoming superheavy rocket (a.k.a. the 921 rocket). The development is in full swing.

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My technical Chinese is very limited in this area, so I'm not able to translate the paper. It does however have an English abstract.

Forgive me to nitpick on you. In CASC's presentation and state media reporting, 921 is called 超大型(super large), compared to CZ-5 as 大型(large), CZ-9 as 重型(heavy). Super-heavy in Chinese would be translated as 超重型, which in CASC's term would be much heavier than CZ-9, I would expecting something at least LEO 200t and above.

The article is about the load baring structural design of the first stage. The design is compared with old design used by all CZ except CZ-4's upper stage (small). The old design distributes the force of the thrust to the tank wall through a mounting struct, the new design distributes the force to both the tank wall and the bulkhead. The new design (3310kg) saves 1 tonne of structural mass compared to the old (4330kg).

The photos in the article are of the static test article.

 

[taxiya]

What functions does the antenna to?

I think they are for the GGSO and GEO Beidou satellites. So the guess is for communications. One likely possibility is the two-way text messaging with the mobile device, with a large antenna that size, the mobile device can be made small enough to carry around. The reason of mobile to GEO sat messaging is to make sure a device in any part of the world can communicate with station in China without relying on any other system.