Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
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Joint mission will send two unmanned probes into orbit around the closest planet to the sun
The BepiColombo standing in position at a test facility in Spijkenisse. Its mission to Mercury is scheduled for launch on an Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on October 20. Photo: AFP Photo
Final preparations were underway on Friday for the launch of a joint mission by European and Japanese space agencies to send twin probes to Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.
An Ariane 5 rocket is scheduled to lift the unmanned spacecraft into orbit from French Guiana shortly before midnight, the start of a seven-year journey to the solar system’s innermost planet.
Mercury is seen in silhouette, lower third of image, as it transits across the face of the sun. Photo: AFP PHOTO / NASA / BILL INGALLS
The European Space Agency says the €1.3 billion (US$1.5 billion) mission is one of the most challenging in its history. Mercury’s extreme temperatures, the intense gravity pull of the sun and blistering solar radiation make for hellish conditions.
The BepiColombo spacecraft will have to follow an elliptical path that involves a fly-by of Earth, two of Venus and six of Mercury itself so it can slow down sufficiently before arriving at its destination in December 2025.
An Ariane-5 rocket is set for launch at the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou in French Guiana. Photo: Kyodo
Newly developed electrical ion thrusters will help nudge the spacecraft, which was named after Italian scientist Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo, into the right orbit.
Aborted launch astronauts may head to International Space Station this year: Nasa head says
12 Oct 2018
When it arrives, BepiColombo will release two probes – Bepi and Mio – that will independently investigate the surface and magnetic field of Mercury. The probes are designed to cope with temperatures varying from 430 degrees Celsius (806F) on the side facing the sun, and -180 degrees Celsius (-292F) in Mercury’s shadow.
An Ariane-5 rocket is transported to its launch site at the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou. Photo: Kyodo
Scientists hope to build on the insights gained by Nasa’s Messenger probe, which ended its mission in 2015 after a four-year orbit of Mercury. The only other spacecraft to visit Mercury was Nasa’s Mariner 10 that flew past the planet in the mid-1970s.
Japanese space robots have landed on asteroid to carry out world-first survey
22 Sep 2018
Mercury, which is only slightly larger than Earth’s moon, has a massive iron core about which little is known. Researchers are also hoping to learn more about the formation of the solar system from the data gathered by the BepiColombo mission.
Malfunction happened during third stage of launch after earlier stages were completed successfully, state media says
Failed mission is second in less than a month after Long March-7A encountered problems after lift-off on March 16
A Long March-3B carrier rocket blasts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in Sichuan province in November. A similar launch on Thursday ended in failure. Photo: Xinhua
China’s space programme suffered another setback on Thursday night with its second rocket launch failure in less than a month.
Officials are investigating what caused a malfunction during the third stage of the Long March-3B launch after lift-off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwest Sichuan province at 7.46pm with an Indonesian Palapa-N1 satellite, Xinhua reported.
“The first and second stages of the rocket performed well, but the third stage malfunctioned,” the report said.
“Debris from the third stage of the rocket and the satellite fell [to the ground]. The launch mission failed.”
Debris from the failed mission rained down over Guam on Thursday night. Photo: Twitter
China’s state media did not say where the rocket landed, but the office of Guam Homeland Security and Civil Defence said “a fiery object over the Marianas sky” observed on Thursday evening was likely connected to the failed launch.
Video footage of the burning debris falling from the sky was widely circulated on social media.
The setback follows another failed launch on March 16, when China’s new Long March-7A, a three-stage, medium-lift, liquid-fuel rocket, encountered an “abnormality” minutes after lifting off from its launch site in the southern island province of Hainan.
China’s BeiDou system one satellite closer to full operation
11 Mar 2020
The satellite lost on Thursday – the Nusantara 2 – was built in China for Indonesian telecommunication companies Pasifik Satelit Nusantara and Indosat Ooredoo. It was intended to replace an older satellite to provide internet and broadcasting services in Indonesia and across the Asia-Pacific region to Australia, The Jakarta Post reported earlier this month.
It is not known if the failed launch will have an impact on other Long March-3B satellite launches planned for later in the year.
Introduced in 1996, the Long March-3B – also known as the CZ-3B or LM-3B – has been the main orbital carrier rocket of China’s space programme. It was used to carry many of the satellites that make up China’s BeiDou navigation system, with the latest addition being in March.
For that launch, engineers used parachutes to control where the rocket’s boosters would land after being discarded after lift-off so as to minimise the impact on people living below, state media reported.
The latest version of the Long March-3B entered service in 2007 and is dedicated to launching heavy communications satellites of up to 5.5 tonnes into geostationary transfer orbits.
NANJING, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) — China’s rocket-carrying ships Yuanwang-21 and Yuanwang-22 wrapped up their mission of transporting the Long March-5 Y3 rocket and arrived at a port in eastern China’s Jiangsu Province Monday.
The two rocket-carrying ships departed from northern China’s Tianjin Port on Oct. 22 and arrived at Qinglan Port in Wenchang in southern China’s Hainan Province after a five-day journey.
The two rocket-carrying ships are China’s first ships made exclusively to carry rockets. With a length of 130 meters, a width of 19 meters and a height of 37 meters, the ships have a displacement of 9,000 tonnes. Each ship is equipped with two 120-tonne cranes that can hoist large rockets.
Each ship has traveled around 4,900 nautical miles, and new hoisting methods have been adopted to improve efficiency, according to Shi Zhe, head of the ships.
The five new remote-sensing Ningxia-1 satellites are launched by a Long March-6 carrier rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China’s Shanxi Province on Nov. 13, 2019. The five Ningxia-1 satellites were sent into planned orbit here on Wednesday. The satellites are part of a commercial satellite project invested by the Ningxia Jingui Information Technology Co., Ltd. and will be mainly used for remote sensing detection. (Photo by Zheng Taotao/Xinhua)
TAIYUAN, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) — Five new remote-sensing satellites were sent into planned orbit from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China’s Shanxi Province Wednesday.
The five Ningxia-1 satellites were launched by a Long March-6 carrier rocket at 2:35 p.m. (Beijing Time).
The satellites are part of a commercial satellite project invested by the Ningxia Jingui Information Technology Co., Ltd. and will be mainly used for remote sensing detection.
The satellites and carrier rocket were developed by the DFH Satellite Co., Ltd. and the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology.
Wednesday’s launch was the 318th mission for the Long March series carrier rockets.
India hopes the $145m (£116m) mission will be the first to land on the Moon’s south pole.
Last month’s launch was the beginning of a 384,000km (239,000-mile) journey. Scientists hope the lander will touch down on the Moon on 6 or 7 September as planned.
India’s first lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, was launched in 2008 but it did not land on the lunar surface. However it carried out the first and most detailed search for water on the Moon using radars.
Chandrayaan-2 (Moon vehicle 2) will try to land near the little-explored south pole of the Moon.
The mission will focus on the lunar surface, searching for water and minerals and measuring moonquakes, among other things.
India used its most powerful rocket, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV Mk-III), in this mission. It weighed 640 tonnes (almost 1.5 times the weight of a fully-loaded 747 jumbo jet) and, at 44 metres (144ft), was as high as a 14-storey building.
The spacecraft used in the mission has three distinct parts: an orbiter, a lander and a rover.
The orbiter, which weighs 2,379kg (5,244lb) and has a mission life of a year, will take images of the lunar surface.
The lander (named Vikram, after the founder of Isro) weighs about half as much, and carries within its belly a 27kg Moon rover with instruments to analyse the lunar soil. In its 14-day life, the rover (called Pragyan – wisdom in Sanskrit) can travel up to a half a kilometre from the lander and will send data and images back to Earth for analysis.
Media caption Is India a space superpower?
How long is the journey to the Moon?
The journey of more than six weeks is a lot longer than the four days the Apollo 11 mission 50 years ago took to land humans on the lunar surface for the first time.
In order to save fuel, India’s space agency has chose a circuitous route to take advantage of the Earth’s gravity, which will help slingshot the satellite towards the Moon. India does not have a rocket powerful enough to hurl Chandrayaan-2 on a direct path. In comparison, the Saturn V rocket used by the Apollo programme remains the largest and most powerful rocket ever built.
“There will be 15 terrifying minutes for scientists once the lander is released and is hurled towards the south pole of the Moon,” Isro chief K Sivan said prior to the first launch attempt.
He explained that those who had been controlling the spacecraft until then would have no role to play in those crucial moments. So, the actual landing would happen only if all the systems performed as they should. Otherwise, the lander could crash into the lunar surface.
BEIJING, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) — China announced Monday that it is developing the modified version of the Long March-6 rocket with four additional solid boosters to increase its carrying capacity.
The improved medium-left carrier rocket will be sent into space by 2020, according to the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASTC), which designed the rocket.
With a short launch preparation cycle, the Long March-6 has been mainly used for the academy’s commercial launches. The rocket completed two space tests in September 2015 and November 2017, carrying 20 satellites and three satellites, respectively.
The three-stage rocket is 29.3 meters long, with a launch weight of 103 tonnes. It has a carrying capacity of one tonne for sun-synchronous orbit.
Fueled by a liquid propellant made of liquid oxygen and kerosene, the Long March-6 is China’s first carrier rocket that uses non-toxic and non-polluting fuel.
Ding Xiufeng, executive manager of the Long March-6 project, said in response to the growing demand for commercial launches, they will have the rockets’ market competitiveness enhanced through technical improvements, so that they can provide easier, faster and more comprehensive services to users at home and abroad.
In January, the China Great Wall Industry Corporation, affiliated with the CASTC, signed a multiple launch services agreement with Satellogic to use the Long March-6 and the Long March-2 rockets to launch 90 satellites for a private Argentine company in the coming years.
The first 13 satellites will be delivered later this year. It will be the first time for the Long March-6 to provide launch services for an international user.
BepiColombo
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 