22 January 2018
On an evening in November 2016, Deng Qingming went home to find his wife and his daughter had prepared a lavish spread of his favorite dishes and wine. He ran to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and, concealed by the sound of running water, cried like a baby. Deng is a taikonaut who has never been to space. He was backup to commander Jing Haipeng in Shenzhou-11 mission.
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21 January 2018
Taikonaut Zhang Xiaoguang prepared for 15 years to go into space. Zhang, one of the 14 pilots recruited as China's first batch of taikonauts, was 32 when he joined the Taikonaut Corps of People's Liberation Army at its founding in 1998. In order to pass the more than 30 fundamental courses that are required of every taikonaut, he wrote over 200,000 Chinese characters of study notes. He studied advanced mathematics, aerodynamics, astronomy, English, environmental science, medicine, psychology, space science and technology and many other theoretical courses, all in one year, a superhuman task equal to compressing a normal college student's four-year study plan into 12 months.
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21 January 2018
As Hollywood blockbusters continue to hit the screens in China since the start of the year, a Russian space film has quietly entered cinemas and received immediate praise. Released on the Chinese mainland on Jan. 12, "Salyut-7" tells the true story of two cosmonauts sent to investigate and repair the unmanned USSR station Salyut-7, which lost connection with ground control after nearly three years in service.
Despite underwhelming box office sales of 11.82 million yuan (1.85 million U.S. dollars) as of Friday due to limited screenings, the film was rated 7.7 on Chinese film rating platform Douban, higher than most other recently released movies. Many of the over 13,000 users who left ratings compared the film with Hollywood space films, and commented on its unique value.
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20 January 2018
Technical details of an intercontinental videoconference by the "unhackable" quantum-secured real-world communication last year were published in Physical Review Letters on 19 January. Researchers from two countries have performed quantum key distribution between China's quantum-science satellite Micius and ground stations located in Xinglong County near Beijing and Graz near Vienna. The videoconference lasted for 75 minutes with a total data transmission of 2 gigabits, the paper shows.
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