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China ponders moon base within five years

Monday, 21 December 2020 12:16
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Beijing (Sputnik) Dec 18, 2020
According to a report, China's national space agency said it would invite other agencies and foreign partners to work jointly on the project if possible, with the next lunar mission likely to take place in the next five years. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced it will analyse whether it can build a permanent base on the moon, media reports revealed on Thursday.
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The Long March-8 series is part of China's endeavours to develop reusable rockets, potentially lowering mission costs and paving
The Long March-8 series is part of China's endeavours to develop reusable rockets, potentially lowering mission costs and paving the way towards commercial launch services

China's new carrier rocket, the Long March-8, made its maiden flight on Tuesday, the country's space agency said, the first phase of a strategy to deploy launch vehicles that can be reused.

The Long March-8 series is part of China's endeavours to develop reusable rockets, potentially lowering mission costs and paving the way towards commercial launch services.

The programme has drawn parallels to private US rocket firm SpaceX's Falcon range, although China said in 2018 its reusable carrier vehicle would use different technologies.

The new medium-lift carrier rocket sent five satellites into planned orbit, blasting off from the Wenchang launch site on the southern Hainan island at 12:37 pm Beijing time (0437 GMT) on Tuesday.

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The first Long March 8 launch, lifting off from Wenchang.

HELSINKI — China successfully carried out a first launch of the new Long March 8 medium-lift rocket late Monday, marking a small step towards Chinese rocket reusability.

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Kevin O'Connell

WASHINGTON — The Commerce Department will be able to accelerate it work on space traffic management after Congress provided the agency with most, but not all, the funding it requested for that effort.

Space bauble

Monday, 21 December 2020 09:50
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Bubble produced by the Multiscale Boiling experiment on the International Space Station Image: Bubble produced by the Multiscale Boiling experiment on the International Space Station
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Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Dec 22, 2020
Astroscale Holdings Inc. ("Astroscale"), the market leader in securing long-term orbital sustainability, has shipped its End-of-Life Services by Astroscale demonstration (ELSA-d) satellite to Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a March 2021 launch on a Soyuz rocket. "Shipment is always a significant milestone on any satellite development program," said Gene Fujii, Astroscale Chief Engine
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Beijing (Sputnik) Dec 22, 2020
Having finished its primary mission, the part of China's Chang'e-5 spacecraft that remained in space has departed for a new mission: exploring an unusual area of space known as a Lagrangian point. On December 16, the orbiter vehicle performed the final task of its primary mission when it dropped off the capsule carrying samples from the lunar surface. The capsule plunged back to Earth, bei
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Liege, Belgium (SPX) Dec 22, 2020
Already involved since 2018 in the Altius (Atmospheric Limb Tracker for the Investigation of the Upcoming Stratosphere) stratosphere observation mission at several levels, the software engineering company SPACEBEL is ending the year 2020 in style. The European Space Agency (ESA) has now officially awarded the SME a new contract to supply the payload data ground segment. This operational gr
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Bay St. Louis, MS (SPX) Dec 22, 2020
NASA and Boeing engineers successfully completed propellant loading during the seventh core stage Green Run test, wet dress rehearsal Sunday, Dec. 20. The massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket's tanks were loaded with more than 700,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Engineers working in the Test Control Center monitored all core stage systems during the test as propellant
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San Antonio TX (SPX) Dec 22, 2020
A Southwest Research Institute-led team of scientists has identified a potentially new meteorite parent asteroid by studying a small shard of a meteorite that arrived on Earth a dozen years ago. The composition of a piece of the meteorite Almahata Sitta (AhS) indicates that its parent body was an asteroid roughly the size of Ceres, the largest object in the main asteroid belt, and formed in the
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Rochester NY (SPX) Dec 22, 2020
While the scientific community grapples with the loss of the Arecibo radio telescope, astronomers who recently revived a long-dormant radio telescope array in Argentina hope it can help modestly compensate for the work Arecibo did in pulsar timing. Last year, scientists at Rochester Institute of Technology and the Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomia (IAR) began a pulsar timing study us

The upside of volatile space weather

Monday, 21 December 2020 08:31
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Evanston IL (SPX) Dec 22, 2020
Although violent and unpredictable, stellar flares emitted by a planet's host star do not necessarily prevent life from forming, according to a new Northwestern University study. Emitted by stars, stellar flares are sudden flashes of magnetic energy. On Earth, the sun's flares sometimes damage satellites and disrupt radio communications. Elsewhere in the universe, however, robust stellar f

On the Hunt for a Missing Giant Black Hole

Monday, 21 December 2020 08:31
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Huntsville AL (SPX) Dec 22, 2020
The mystery surrounding the whereabouts of a supermassive black hole has deepened. Despite searching with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have no evidence that a distant black hole estimated to weigh between 3 billion and 100 billion times the mass of the Sun is anywhere to be found. This missing black hole should be in the enormous galaxy in the ce
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Paris (ESA) Dec 22, 2020
The optical and infrared instruments of Euclid, ESA's mission to study dark energy and dark matter in space, have passed their qualification and acceptance reviews and are now fully integrated into the spacecraft's payload module. This marks an important step forward in the assembly of the Euclid space telescope, which is scheduled for launch in 2022. The two Euclid instruments, the visibl
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WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet said he expects the U.S. government to approve the company’s proposed $4.4 billion acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne despite concerns that it could reduce competition in the hypersonic missiles market.

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