Mobile phones with BDS messaging function will enter the market in China
20 April 2022
Mobile phones equipped with the BDS-3 short message communication function will soon be available in the consumer market.
In 2021, the number of China-made smartphones with BDS application support reached 324 million units, accounting for 94.5 % of the country's smartphone shipment that very year, showed statistics from the NDRC.
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Dongfanghour: Why Chinese Rockets Drop White Fragments at Launch
19 April 2022
Welcome to another episode of the Dongfang Hour! Jean Deville explains in this episode the story behind the mysterious white fragments that fall off (some) Chinese rockets during launch. This question is asked very frequently about Chinese rockets :) If you like to support Jean and Blaine, maybe you would like to buy them a coffee?
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Chinese space station themed kite flying welcomes return of Shenzhou 13 crew
17 April 2022
Kites themed on China's Tiangong space station fly in the sky to celebrate the successful return of 3 taikonauts at the Weifang International Kite Festival, in east China's Shangdong Province, on 17 April 2022. Weifang is the city of kites. The kite has several parts and a Shenzhou space craft can be guided to dock with the bigger part of the kite, representing the Tiangong space station and an astronaut performing an extravehicular spacewalk (animated with a motor). The kite has a lenght of 160 m and a team of 20 kite artists has worked on it for 2 months. The space station complex has a dimension of 6 x 3.5 m.
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link to WeChat news story with video sequences of the kit
Press Conference on the CSS/SZ-13 achievements and upcoming Shenzhou missions
17 April 2022
On 17 April, The State Council Information Office gave a press conference on the progress of the construction of the Chinese Space Station. Hao Chun, Director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, gave on overview on the upcoming tasks for finalising the assembly of the CSS. The 2 science modules will be launched in the 2nd half of 2022, during the stay of the SZ-14 mission. The SZ-15 mission has to verify the operational functionality of the modules. Both crews are assigned but the names were not revealed. For the 1st time SZ-15 will rotate with SZ-14 in orbit, to start the permanent occupation of the CSS. Per year, 2 crews will stay for 6 months on the CSS with an overlap of several days.
link to press conference with Chinese transcript
http://www.scio.gov.cn/xwfbh/xwbfbh/wqfbh/47673/48121/index.htm
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details on the Wentian and Mengtian science lab modules
details on the crewed missions