30 July 2020
The planned landing area is near Mons Rümker in Oceanus Procellarum. It is important to have a detailed geological analysis of the landing area prior to the lunar sample collection. The crater size-frequency distribution curve, combined with radioisotope dating of components of the returned sample by CE-5, may allow a refinement of the lunar chronology function. Based on a digital orthophoto map with a pixel size of 1.5 m generated from NASA's more than 700 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera Narrow Angle Camera images of the CE-5 landing area, all impact craters larger than 200 m in diameter were extracted.
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link to paper: Mengna Jia, Zongyu Yue, Kaichang Di, Bin Liu, Jianzhong Liu, Gregory Michael; A catalogue of impact craters larger than 200 m and surface age analysis in the Chang'e-5 landing area; Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 541, 2020, 116272, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2020.116272.

28 July 2020
China is trying to reduce its dependency on imported helium it uses to make hi-tech products and in high-tech processes. Nearly all helium used in China - whether to pump fuel for its huge Long March-5 rocket, to protect metal during welding, to produce laser light, or to create the super-clean environment needed to make computer chips - comes from elsewhere, mostly the United States or US-owned facilities in other countries. A new factory in Yanchi county (Ningxia), which started operating last week, produces helium at a commercial scale. However, compared to the massive amount China uses every year, the output - so far - is low.
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31 July 2020
China declared the official commissioning of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) on 31 July, marking the formal opening of the newly completed BDS-3 system for global users. The BDS system is one of China's major achievements since the reform and opening-up, said Chi Jun, Chief Director of the BDS-3 satellite research team at the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST). "BDS, an important piece of space infrastructure, serves the productivity and lives of people by providing accurate time-and-space information services," Chi said.
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02 August 2020
China's Mars probe Tianwen 1 successfully carried out its first orbital correction in the morning of 2 August, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA). The probe conducted the orbital correction at 07:00 (Beijing Time) after its 3,000 N engine worked for 20 seconds, and continued to head for Mars. All the systems of the probe were in good condition. Before the orbital correction, the Mars probe had traveled more than 230 hours in space, and was about 3 million km away from the Earth.
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news report with photo gallery