30 July 2020
The planned landing area is near Mons Rümker in Oceanus Procellarum. It is important to have a detailed geological analysis of the landing area prior to the lunar sample collection. The crater size-frequency distribution curve, combined with radioisotope dating of components of the returned sample by CE-5, may allow a refinement of the lunar chronology function. Based on a digital orthophoto map with a pixel size of 1.5 m generated from NASA's more than 700 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera Narrow Angle Camera images of the CE-5 landing area, all impact craters larger than 200 m in diameter were extracted.
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link to paper: Mengna Jia, Zongyu Yue, Kaichang Di, Bin Liu, Jianzhong Liu, Gregory Michael; A catalogue of impact craters larger than 200 m and surface age analysis in the Chang'e-5 landing area; Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 541, 2020, 116272, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2020.116272.
30 July 2020
To facilitate scientific research and science popularization, the Chinese Astronomical Society (CAS) invited experts to translate the Mars terrain terms issued by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) before 15 July 2020 into Chinese. The translations were reviewed and approved by a special committee for astronomical terms affiliated to the CAS and the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies.
following the successful launch of China's first Mars exploration mission, CAS released the recommended Chinese names of 811 Mars terrain features on its website. According to this catalogue, Utopia Planitia is translated as: 乌托邦平原
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link to landing page (DOI 10.12149/80027)
link to list of names on the website of the China National Astronomical Data Centre
29 July 2020
The 55th and last satellite of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) has completed in-orbit testing and started operation. The satellite was the last one of the BDS-3 system. It was launched on 23 June and entered its position in GEO.
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UPDATE 31 July 2020
China's President Xi Jinping attends a ceremony to mark the launch of the BeiDou-3 Navigation Satellite System in Beijing and declares the official begin of operation of the BDS-3 system
25 July 2020
The Ziyuan III 03 satellite was launched by a Long March-4B rocket on 25 July at 11:13 BJT from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in the northern province of Shanxi. Also on board the rocket was the Tianqi 10 cubesat for an IoT constellation in LEO and the NJU-HKU-1 Lobster Eye X-ray micro satellite searching for evidence of dark matter. They were developed by the Shanghai ASES Spaceflight Technology Co. Ltd. All three satellites have entered preset orbits, sources with the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre said.
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29 July 2020
An image captured by China's Mars probe, Tianwen 1, on July 27, 2020 shows the Earth and the Moon. The photo was taken with the optical navigation sensor at a distance of about 1.2 million kilometers from Earth, the China National Space Administration said on 28 July. In the black-and-white picture, the Earth and the Moon, one large and one small, were both crescent-shaped.
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RELATED
Mars probe begins science operations
22 July 2020
A joint team of researchers from the State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, the CAS Key Laboratory of Ocean Circulation and Waves, the Center for Ocean Mega-Science, and the College of Marine Sciences of the Shanghai Ocean University, developed the satellite data-driven deep learning model for forecasting the evolution of sea surface temperature associated with the tropical instability wave. Their study was inspired by available satellite remote sensing data and advancements in deep learning technology. They have explored key marine data and established a deep learning model to conduct oceanic forecasts. The research result was published in the journal Science Advances.
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Link to publication...