Manned Mars mission still in need of many technology developments
05 November 2019
Scientists and engineers must overcome a great many difficulties to send a manned mission to Mars, Pang Zhihao, a space technology researcher in Beijing said. "First of all, Mars is very far from Earth - the closest distance is 55 million kilometers, which means a round trip will take more than 500 days. Second, putting a manned rocket into the Earth-Mars transfer trajectory will require it to be able to fly at the escape velocity, or 11.2 km per second." Other factors that should be taken into consideration include disturbances in communication between a Mars-bound spacecraft and Earth, sources of energy to sustain operations on Mars and astronauts' health risks caused by a lengthy stay on Mars.
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China to meet challenges of exploring asteroid, comet
06 November 2019
Chinese space engineers are tackling the key technologies needed to explore a near-Earth asteroid and a main-belt comet with one space probe. The proposed mission is to send a probe around an asteroid named 2016HO3 and then land on it to collect samples, Huang Jiangchuan, a researcher from the China Academy of Space Technology, recently presented at the 1st China Space Science Assembly in Xiamen, east China's Fujian Province. The probe will then fly back to the proximity of Earth, and release a capsule to return the samples. After that, the probe will continue its journey. With the assistance of the gravity of Earth and Mars, it will finally arrive at the main asteroid belt and orbit comet 133P, Huang said.
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Free public access to China space agency's satellite data
07 November 2019
China will share data from its Gaofen (GF) satellites free to the public on the website www.cnsageo.com, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced at a meeting of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) in Canberra, Australia. The China High-resolution Earth Observation System aims to build up an observation system based on satellites, aircraft and ground systems. Several satellites including the GF-1 and GF-6 have been launched under the system’s framework. Through the website, people can access three kinds of GF 16-meter data: a global coverage map generated with archived data, historical archived data, and 16-meter data updated daily, according to CNSA.
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China confirms reception of data from Gaofen 7 satellite
08 November 2019
The Chinese Academy of Sciences confirmed that the China Remote Sensing Satellite Ground Station has received 616.6 GB of data from the newly launched Earth observation satellite Gaofen 7. The satellite has adopted variable coding and modulation technology, effectively improving its downlink transmission efficiency of satellite data. Additionally, the China Remote Sensing Satellite Ground Station also developed new ground data receiving devices for adaptive, fully automatic and reliable reception of multiple satellite data.
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