10 May 2017
Eight Chinese volunteers, split into two groups, will live in "Yuegong-1", (Lunar Palace 1) a simulated space "cabin" in Beijing for the next year, strengthening China's knowledge and technical know-how, and helping the country's scientists understand exactly what will be required for humans to remain on the moon in the medium and long terms.
The Lunar Palace 1 is a facility for conducting bio-regenerative life-support systems experiments, key to setting up a lunar base, in Beijing University for Aeronautics and Astronautics (BUAA) in Beijing, capital of China, 10 May 2017. A ceremony was held in the BUAA on 10 May as 8 volunteers start a 365-day experiment in two groups in the Lunar Palace 1. A similar 105-day trial was carried out successfully in 2014.
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11 May 2017
Satellite communications technology is the crown jewel of China's high-tech development, and it has played a vital role in connecting the country with the rest of the world. A team of about 500 engineers from the China Academy of Space Technology, with an average age of just 33, forms the backbone of design, research and application for China's satellite communications technology, which is used in commercial and mobile communications, broadcast and data transfer, among many other things.
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10 May 2017
During a presentation at the 2017 Humans to Mars conference in Washington, D.C. on 9 May, Aldrin said, NASA should continue to hand over activities in low Earth orbit (LEO) to private industry partners. Bigelow Aerospace, Axiom Space or other companies should build and operate LEO space stations that are independent of the ISS, he added. Ideally, the first of these commercial outposts would share key orbital parameters with the station that China plans to have up and running by the early 2020s, to encourage cooperation with the Chinese, he stated.
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08 May 2017
Inner main-belt asteroid No. 456677 was named after Chinese aerospace scientist and the Chief Commander and Chief Designer of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Programme, Ye Peijian at a ceremony on 08 May. Ye is active in the country's lunar probe and deep space missions, and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The minor planet was discovered by a Chinese team at the Purple Mountain Observatory in east China's Nanjing on 11 September 2007.
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09 May 2017
It has been called the 'the largest and heaviest cargo plane in the world' and now, the legendary Antonov An-225 Mriya aircraft could soon take on a new mission. The Airspace Industry Corporation of China (AICC) signed an agreement with the plane's creator, which, if approved, will allow the organization to design its own fleet that would launch commercial satellites into orbit. However, the aerospace and defense firm would 'modernize' the craft in a fashion that would provide it with heavy lifting capabilities that could be 'greater than that of the US military'. The program is working on a strategy that places a satellite on the back of an An-225 and launches it from no more than seven miles (12,000m) in the air.
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09 May 2017
Chinese scientists will look at ways to harvest resources on asteroids and how to use these so-called minor planets as bases for interstellar journeys, according to a senior space expert. Ye Peijian, a leading specialist in deep-space exploration at the China Academy of Space Technology, told an asteroid exploration forum in Beijing on 8 May that more than 900 asteroids fly past Earth each year and many of them have rich resources of precious metals such as platinum, rhodium and iridium. "In the near future, we will study ways to send robots or astronauts to mine suitable asteroids and transport the resources back to Earth. In the long term, we will consider using resources from asteroids to build facilities in space or to provide materials to support interstellar travel," he said.
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