12 June 2020
The International Astronautical Federation - IAF decided to confer the 2020 IAF World Space Award to Wu Weiren, Chief Designer of China's Chang'e lunar programmes and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering; Yu Dengyun, Deputy Chief Designer of Chang'e programmes and Deputy Director of Science and Technology at China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp; and Sun Zezhou, Chief Designer of the Chang'e 4 probe and a top researcher at the China Academy of Space Technology.
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12 June 2020
The satellites, Xingyun-2 01 and 02 for China's space-based Internet-of-Things (IoT) project have completed phase-1 tests in orbit. Engineers at the Xingyun Ground Gateway, located in Wuhan National Aerospace Industry Base, tested the satellite platforms, payloads, and key technologies such as inter-satellite links. The results were in line with expectations, CASIC said. Additional in-orbit tests will be continued for the completion of the Xingyun project, China's first self-developed, space-based IoT constellation. The project is anticipated to solve problems detected in the IoT businesses' communication blind-zone, as a result of deficient coverage of cellular wireless communication networks.
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12 June 2020
Xinmei Shen summarised for Abacus what the Chinese internet community thinks about the new Netflix series: "For many TV critics, the new Netflix comedy Space Force isn’t all that comedic. But in China, where Netflix is unavailable, many people are finding ways to watch the show - and they find it entertaining. Or at least they do when they’re not being offended by it."
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12 June 2020
With the close collaboration between National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) and European Space Agency (ESA), ESA's world-leading interactive celestial atlas, ESASky, has now been translated into Chinese. ESASky is a discovery portal that provides full access to the entire sky. It is a web-based application allowing users to zoom in on any celestial object they may be interested in. Once there, they can look at data collected from more than 50 space missions and ground-based observatories across all frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. The application is under the responsibility of the ESAC Science Data Centre (ESDC), based at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), Madrid, Spain.
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