06 January 2022
According to CASC's annual work report, China's major space contractor plans to carry out more than 40 space launch missions in 2022. Among the scheduled launches, the most important ones will be the 6 related to the Tiangong space station programme. Mission planners at CASC have said that of the 6 spacecraft for the CSS, the 1st to be launched will be the Tianzhou 4, followed by the SZ-14 crewed spacecraft. Then the 2 space labs - Wentian (Quest for Heavens), and Mengtian (Dreaming of Heavens) - will be lifted to complete the Tiangong station. The Tianzhou 5 will be the 5th, and the final one will be SZ-15.
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06 January 2022
The robotic arm attached to the CSS successfully grabbed and moved the Tianzhou 2 cargo ship in a test on 06 January. It's the first such manoeuvre of the 10-m long robotic arm, which can lift objects weighing up to 20 t. CMSA said that the arm secured the robotic cargo craft in the early morning of 6 January and began to move it to a new position at 6:12 BJT. Tianzhou 2 had been connected to the station's Tianhe core module and was undocked before the test started. After moving the ship to a predetermined position, the arm reversed the manoeuvres to bring it back to its original position. Tianzhou 2 re-docked with Tianhe, finishing the 47-minute test at 6:59 BJT. The test achieved its goal of verifying the repositioning procedure and the devices designed for arm-enabled operations, and provided additional experience that will be used in the next steps of Tiangong's construction in orbit.
China intends to complete building the CSS in 2022 by launching 2 crewed missions, 2 cargo space craft and 2 additional station modules.
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Footage of Robotic Arm Transposition Test on the CNSA YouTube channel

05 January 2022
In the first 2022 edition of the Dongfang Hour China Space News Roundup!, Jean Deville and Blaine Curcio focus on 2 topics: the official confirmation of the Phase 4 of CLEP comprising the Chang'e 6-8 missions and the close encounter between Starlink satellites and the Chinese Space Station in 2021.
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06 January 2022
Based on data from FAST observations in 2019, a team of international scientists found that magnetic fields cannot hold off gravitational collapse in the early stages of star formation as scientists previously assumed. The discovery has challenged the standard theory of star formation.
Scientists measured the strength of the magnetic fields in the L1544 region, a pre-stellar core in early transition into becoming a star located in the Taurus star forming regions about 450 light years from Earth. Using an observational technique called HI Narrow Self-Absorption, scientists discovered that the magnetic pressure was too weak to prevent gravitational contraction at this early stage of the process.
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Link to publication in Nature