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.

Washington DC (AFNS) Dec 21, 2020
For centuries, the U.S. military has fought wars on land and sea. For that, America has the Army, the Navy and the Marine Corps. Then, in 1909, the U.S. Army bought America's first military aircraft with a $30,000 contract awarded to the Wright brothers. Less than four decades later, in 1947, the U.S. military gave birth to the U.S. Air Force to operate in the air domain. Now, the Defense

Washington DC (AFNS) Dec 21, 2020
The U.S. Space Force and Japan's Office of National Space Policy signed an historic Memorandum of Understanding this week to launch two U.S. payloads on Japan's Quasi Zenith Satellite System. The Department of the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center is developing the payloads, which feature Space Domain Awareness optical sensors and will launch from Japan's Tanegashima Space Cente

Beijing (XNA) Dec 16, 2020
The Ethiopian Remote Sensing Satellite-1, the African nation's first satellite, has been handed over to its Ethiopian operators, according to the China Academy of Space Technology, which designed and built the spacecraft. A delivery ceremony was held earlier this month in Beijing with participants from both countries, it said in a statement. Ethiopian Ambassador to China Teshome Toga

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.

Beijing (XNA) Dec 18, 2020
For Siziwang Banner of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, falling spacecraft are nothing unusual. Before the landing of Chang'e 5 at 1:59 am on Thursday, the site also welcomed back 11 Shenzhou spacecraft designed for China's manned spaceflight program, as well as 14 astronauts over the past two decades. Siziwang Banner is located at the center of Inner Mongolia, about 80 kilomete

Beijing (XNA) Dec 18, 2020
China plans to use its next moon mission, Chang'e 6, to collect samples from the moon's south pole or possibly the celestial body's far side, according to a key figure in the nation's lunar exploration program. Wu Yanhua, deputy head of China National Space Administration, told China Daily on Thursday after a news conference in Beijing that project managers' current plans call for the Chan

Washington DC (UPI) Dec 17, 2020
United Launch Alliance, which has been a launch provider to the U.S. government for 14 years, plans to send its new Vulcan rocket aloft by late 2021, CEO Tory Bruno said Thursday. The company had been aiming for the first Vulcan launch in mid-2021, but the timeline slipped for the first mission - the Peregrine lunar rover being builkt by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic, Bruno said.

Image: Bubble produced by the Multiscale Boiling experiment on the International Space Station

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