HELSINKI — China will work on development of two types of super-heavy launch vehicles for future lunar projects, a senior official said Wednesday.

Jiang Jie, chief designer of the Long March 3A series of hypergolic launchers, told press (Chinese) in Beijing March 3 that the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) would continue development of both a heavy launch vehicle and a new generation crew launch vehicle over the next five years.

Designing and building equipment for space is hard enough; then comes the writing of its accompanying documentation. Creating a working space mission involves putting together a vast number of elements correctly, so such guidelines need to be clear and easy to understand. ESA is leading efforts to create standardised ‘Electronic Data Sheets’ for common use across the space industry.

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Watch the replay of the briefing to media representatives to learn more about the next spaceflight of ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.

During the event, Samantha was joined by ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher,  ESA Director of Human and Robotic Exploration David Parker, and Italian space agency president Giorgio Saccoccia.

Samantha is a member of ESA’s astronaut class of 2009. During her firsission ‘Futura’ in 2014t m–15, she spent 200 days in space, carrying out science and operations on the International Space Station as a flight engineer for Expeditions 42 and 43. She now looks forward to returning to the

Beijing (XNA) Feb 26, 2021
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, the nation's leading space contractor, announced on Wednesday that it plans to conduct the maiden flight of the Long March 6A carrier rocket before the end of this year. The State-owned conglomerate said in an annual report on its space activities that the medium-lift Long March 6A will consist of a 50-meter, liquid-propelled core booster and fo

Reston VA (SPX) Feb 25, 2021
SES Government Solutions (SES GS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of SES, in close partnership with a key U.S. Government customer, designed, developed and is fielding an O3b Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) loopback capability to provide greatly improved mission-critical communications for Department of Defense operations in remote locations in Southwest Asia. The awarded task order is against the sin

Houston TX (SPX) Mar 02, 2021
Rice University physicists have discovered a way to trap the world's coldest plasma in a magnetic bottle, a technological achievement that could advance research into clean energy, space weather and astrophysics. "To understand how the solar wind interacts with the Earth, or to generate clean energy from nuclear fusion, one has to understand how plasma - a soup of electrons and ions - beha

Washington DC (SPX) Feb 26, 2021
NASA has selected Astra Space Inc. to provide a launch service for the agency's Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation Structure and Storm Intensity with a Constellation of SmallSats (TROPICS) mission. The TROPICS mission consists of a constellation of six CubeSats and will increase the scientific community's understanding of storm processes. The launch service contract for the

Zurich, Switzerland (SPX) Feb 25, 2021
To become climate neutral by 2050, the European Union launched two ambitious programmes: "Green Deal" and "DigitalStrategy". As a key component of their successful implementation, climate scientists and computer scientists launched the "Destination Earth" initiative, which will start in mid-021 and is expected to run for up to ten years. During this period, a highly accurate digital model of the

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Mar 02, 2021
Up, up, and ... back down! On Jan. 27, scientists on an island in Indonesia launched a weather balloon carrying an ozonesonde - an instrument that measures ozone throughout the layers of Earth's atmosphere. Ozonesondes collect valuable data that scientists use to understand Earth's atmosphere, improve air quality predictions, and validate satellite measurements. The Indonesian space agency

Moscow, Russia (SPX) Mar 02, 2021
Researchers from Skoltech and the University of Cambridge have shown that polaritons, the quirky particles that may end up running the quantum supercomputers of the future, can form structures behaving like molecules - and these "artificial molecules" can potentially be engineered on demand. The paper outlining these results was published in the journal Physical Review B Letters. Polariton