19 February 2021
A plant in Taizhou, Zhejiang province, has won the approval from the authorities, said its subsidiary Geely Technology in a statement on 18 February, without disclosing the investment amount. It said production is expected to commence eight months from now as the first piece of equipment has entered the plant, and up to 500 satellites could be produced a year for various commercial operations. The group, which is the owner of Volvo, unveiled its low-orbit satellite network plan earlier last year. It had planned to launch its first satellites in late 2020, but the plan was put off, said a company representative, without offering a new schedule.
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19 February 2021
The successful touchdown of NASA's Mars rover "Perseverance", which was announced at mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, immediately thrilled Chinese social media users, with the topic rocketing atop of Sina Weibo search list, gathering over 30 million views as of press time. Chinese web users applauded the NASA craft's safe landing, and extended their sincere congratulations to the US. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) congratulated NASA for the smooth touchdown of the explorer, saying that "it is hoped that all three human missions to the Red Planet can achieve full success and make new contributions to human kind's deep space exploration."
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19 February 2021
The HXMT (Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope) space science satellite, also known as Insight, has found that a fast radio burst (FRB) signal detected last year came from a magnetar in the Milky Way. FRBs are extremely high energy but brief flashes in the cosmos that can come from magnetars, celestial objects with a magnetic strength around 100 trillion times stronger than Earth. The discovery marked a milestone in understanding the nature of the mysterious signal emanating from the universe, the scientists said.
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20 February 2021
After working smoothly through the 27th lunar day, the Chang'e 4 lunar lander and the Yutu 2 rover switched to dormant mode for the 27th lunar night on the far side of the Moon. The lander powered down on 19 February at 13:30 BJT and the rover earlier the same day at 01:48 BJT. As of 20 February, the lander and rover have been in operation for 778 Earth days, and the rover has traveled 652.62 m. The rover is in good condition, and all scientific payloads are working normally.
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