31 May 2020
China launched on 31 May at 16:53 h (Beijing Time) on board a CZ-2D the Gaofen-9 and HEAD-4 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the northwest of the country. The satellites were successfully placed in orbit.
As an optical remote sensing satellite, Gaofen-9 is capable of providing photographs with a resolution of about one meter.
It will be used in land surveys, urban planning, road network design and crop yield estimates, as well as disaster relief. It can also serve projects along the Belt-and-Road region.
The other satellite, HEAD-4, was developed by Beijing-based HEAD Aerospace Technology Co. Ltd. It can carry out on-orbit information collection, including that on ships and aircraft, and the Internet of Things.
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29 May 2020
Chinese scientists have come up with an ingenious alternative to nuclear obliteration for neutralising the threat of potentially Earth-shattering asteroids - staging a cosmic collision to knock the offending rocky mass off course. While NASA has long advocated the use of nuclear weapons to neutralise the threat of so-called potentially hazardous asteroids, detonating a warhead in space is not without its problems or controversy. The alternative, according to a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is to send an unmanned spacecraft out to meet the incoming threat and deflect it out of harm’s way.
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01 June 2020
China plans to launch its first Mars exploration mission Tianwen-1 between July and August, Bao Weimin, academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Science and Technology Commission at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, has told CCTV while sharing details about the mission.
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01 June 2020
Engineers have begun to develop an upgraded version of the Long March 11 carrier rocket called the Long March 11A, which they said will be wider and taller than the current model and have greater thrust. The new Long March 11A will be able to send 1.5 tons of payload to a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 700 kilometers, nearly four times the Long March 11's capacity to that orbit, designers said.
The new model's design work will be finished before the end of this year, and it is expected to make its maiden flight around 2022, said Jin Xin, Deputy Project Manager of the Long March 11 series.
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