02 June 2022
Thomas Smith from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, talks to Ling Xin for "Physics World" about living and working in China and being the 1st foreign national to study Chang’e 5 Moon samples. He also explains how he applied for doing his research on 400 mg of soils as well as two particles – 1 mg and 4.5 mg – as part of the 3rd batch of the CE-5 lunar material.
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09 June 2022
Taikonauts of the Shenzhou 14 crew will carry out 24 in-orbit medical experiments during their 6-month stay on China's space station. These space medical experiments are mainly designed to study how the weightless environment and spaceflights affect taikonauts, said Li Yinghui, Deputy Chief Designer of China's manned space programme taikonaut system. Compared with missions, the SZ-14 will collect body fluid samples, including taikonauts' blood, urine, and saliva. The trio will also use non-invasive optical methods to measure muscle loss and analyze urine metabolites.
During the first days of their stay, the taikonauts were busy unpacking and transferring goods from the 2 cargo crafts: TZ-3 and TZ-4. Each of the two cargo craft contains several metric tons of fuel, which will gradually be pumped into Tiangong to sustain its flight, and hundreds of packages containing the astronauts' daily necessities and personal belongings.
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09 June 2022
The Chinese Academy of Sciences released a new geologic map of the Moon on a scale of 1:2,500,000. The map is based on data from the Chang'e project as well as international data and research findings. The map includes 12,341 impact craters, 81 impact basins, 17 rock types, and 14 types of structures, providing important basic information for scientific research, exploration planning, and landing site selection of the Moon. Previously, USGS Astrogeology Science Center completed and released a moon map to a scale of 1:5,000,000 in 2020. The map is available in both Chinese and English, in paper and electronic versions. It was published in the journal Science Bulletin on 30 May.
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07 June 2022
Watch the latest two episodes of the Dongfang Hour! While in the one from this week Jean Deville explains how the Xuntian Telescope compares to Hubble, he goes in the one from 2 weeks ago over some basic principles and history on asteroids, and then covers China's interest in this field as well as its plans for planetary defense.
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MORE... How does the Xuntian Telescope compare to Hubble?
China Announces Planetary Defense Plans against Near-Earth Objects
09 June 2022
Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), an international team led by astronomers from the National Astronomical Observatories under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) has discovered and localized an active repeating fast radio burst called FRB 20190520B in a metal-poor dwarf galaxy nearly three billion light-years from Earth. Other telescopes including the Very Large Array, the Palomar telescope, the Keck Telescope, Subaru Telescope and Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope continued the observations, respectively, to confirm the FRB 20190520B.
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06 June 2022
After a fast automated rendezvous and docking with 6 orbital manoeuvres, the Shenzhou 14 crew docked with the radial port of the Tianhe module of the Chinese Space Station core module on 5 June at 17:42 BJT. The whole process took approximately 7 hours. By 20:50 BJT, Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe had entered the Tianhe module.
After environmental and system checks and the first night on board, the taikonauts opened the hatch of the Tianzhou 4 cargo craft and entered it on 6 June at 12:19 BJT, starting with unpacking the cargo spaceship. The crew will also enter the Tianzhou 3 cargo craft, and carry out cargo transfer and other related work as planned.
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Shenzhou 14 crew moves into Tianhe, kicking off ‘most complicated’ manned space mission to date