05 May 2017
By the end of April, the State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND), invited top lunar project officials Wu Weiren and Ye Peijian, to a expert committee meeting to discuss the next steps for lunar exploration. While the plans for Chang'e 4 and 5 are known by now, little was public about the Chang'e-6 mission. Chang'e-6 is supposed to follow Chang'e 4's landing on the far side of the Moon and would likely also target the scientifically significant South Pole-Aitken Basin.
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05 May 2017
Aviation enthusiasts' adventures are no longer limited to traveling by airplane. They can now rise to the Earth's stratosphere in a helium balloon and fall back in a parachute, as a new space diving program, the first of its kind in China, is bringing new consumer trends into space.
A space dive project, operated by Space Exploration Inc and the Space Dive Organizing Committee, was launched recently in Beijing as China's first near-space program.
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04 May 2017
China’s Communist Party has decided that veterans of the country’s space programme have the right stuff for promotion to important political roles in key provinces. Giving new meaning to the term high-flier, four aerospace engineers have become provincial governors in the past four years.
Ma Xingrui, a former general manager of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASTC), became governor of Guangdong, the province with the biggest economy, last year. Xu Dazhe, a fellow with the International Academy of Astronautics, has governed the central province of Hunan from around the same time. Two years ago, Chen Qiufa, who oversaw the country’s space programme until 2013, was made governor of Liaoning and tasked with reviving the rust-belt province. Last week, former China Academy of Space Technology president Yuan Jiajun, who was also chief commander of China’s Shenzhou manned space programme, was appointed acting governor of Zhejiang, a hub of private business and the power base of President Xi Jinping.
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28 April 2017
A course about basic knowledge of rockets was offered to all the first graders at Beijing Xicheng Foreign Languages School on 26 April, just two days after China’s national Space Day. The students were taught about the origins, structure and flight theory of rockets, the history of China’s space industry, and the launching process of the Long March-7 carrier rocket, which lifted Tianzhou-1, China’s first cargo spacecraft. The teachers also instructed the students to assemble flying rocket models to gain first-hand experience of how it works.
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