13 December 2019
There have 29 successful rocket launches in China this year and with a few more scheduled for the last days of 2019. "After decades of development, China's space launches have shifted from previous scientific experiments to practical application, which has led to an increase in the number and scale of launches," said Wang Ya'nan, chief editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine. China 's launch technology has reached a "certain level of maturity," Wang said. But there is still a gap between China and leading nations in terms of aerospace infrastructure and new-generation power systems. That difference will not be easy to narrow within a short time, he said.
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10 December 2019
LandSpace, now China’s most well-funded private launch company, completed a 500 million Yuan (US$71M) C Round of funding this week, with the company concurrently announcing that their total fundraising in 2019 has exceeded 600 million Yuan, following a 100 million Yuan B++ round earlier in the year. The current round was led by Country Garden, a major real estate development company and existing investor in a variety of Chinese commercial space companies.
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14 December 2019
China is planning to look for planets near our solar system that can potentially support human life, but not for at least another decade. In a public lecture in Beijing on 12 November, the General Manager of space contractor China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) laid out China’s space exploration program for 2030 to 2045. It includes Mi Yin (“Searching Sound”), a plan that involves sending spacecraft to discover exoplanets and survey how habitable they are.
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14 December 2019
A Long March 5 rocket is expected to blast off from a site in southern China this month carrying not only a next-generation communications satellite, but the hope that the mission will restore pride in the programme after a series of setbacks. One of the sources who confirmed the plan said that the atmosphere at Wenchang Space Launch Centre on the northern tip of Hainan Island was “so tense there seems to be a shortage of oxygen”.
Wu Yansheng, the president and Communist Party secretary of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, flew to Wenchang last month to work with technicians. “The CZ-5 launch … is the biggest political [duty] of the corporation at present,” he was quoted as saying.
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