30 December 2020
Engineers successfully conducted a test run of a new solid rocket booster engine at the Academy of Aerospace Solid Propulsion Technology in Xi'an. The three-segmented booster engine with a diameter of 3.2 m is currently the most powerful solid rocket engine with the largest thrust (260 t), diameter, propellant mass and the longest ignition time in China. The test is to verify whether the engine meets the design requirements before it formally undertakes space launch missions.
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29 December 2020
Researchers have set up special storage facilities, constructed laboratories for sample processing and analysis, and developed detailed operating procedures to ensure that lunar samples are not contaminated and that the research results are reliable. The samples will be first analyzed non-destructively to obtain the samples' element composition and content information, said Xiao Long, a researcher at the China University of Geosciences.
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Storage, processing and preparation methods for China’s returned lunar samples - 51st LPSC 2020

28 December 2020
2020 was a busy space year for China. Despite a difficult first quarter, the nation was able to launch milestone space missions among them were the Tianwen 1 Mars mission, the completion of the Beidou satellite navigation system, the 1st flights of the Long March 5B and Long March 8 rockets and the Chang'e 5 lunar sample return mission. 2021 will not be less important: the space station assembly is about to begin.
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29 December 2020
The Chang'e 5 return capsule hosted also plant seeds and for the 1st time rice seeds. 40 g of those rice seeds which made it to the lunar orbit and returned after 23 days in deep-space have been cultivated at the National Engineering Research Center of Plant Space Breeding of South China Agricultural University. The research centre got the seeds samples handed over on 23 December. Rice is a model organism in genetic research. Using rice as a deep-space payload to study the evolution of species helps to understand hereditary effects in deep-space. It may also produce beneficial mutations that could be applied to rice seed selection and breeding and boost agricultural production.
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