21 April 2021
Ling Xin summerises for Scientific American the upcoming launches for the Chinese Space Station, explains the layout and function of the CSS and which science can be expected on the orbital outpost. She also has some interesting insight about the difficulties for European researchers when applying for research grants to conduct space experiments on the CSS.
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27 April 2021
China's new sea launch facility, located in the coastal city of Haiyang, East China's Shandong Province, will become operational in May. The sea launch base is supported by a hub infrastructure for rocket manufacturing and testing and other equipment and application centres and it will be capable of general assembly and testing for at least 10 solid-propellant rockets per year. The base's capacity will increase to 20 rockets per year by October 2022, Li Shaoning, Deputy Chief Engineer with the project developer and rocket manufacturer China Rocket Co, a CALT subsidiary, told Global Times media during an exclusive interview on 27 April.
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28 April 2021
Liaoning Province in the NorthEast of China will upgrade all its 58 satellite navigation and positioning base stations by May. The average distance between BeiDou base stations in the province is 60 km. The real-time positioning accuracy is stable at 3-5 centimeters. The base stations will be able to receive, store and process multimode satellite signals including BeiDou, GPS and GLONASS. Ten base stations had been upgraded by March, equipped with updated high-resolution data processing and real-time service software from China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS).
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27 April 2021
On 27 April at 11:20 BJT, a Long March 6 launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre in North China's Shanxi province. 9 satellites, including Qilu 1 and Qilu 4, have entered their planned orbits and will provide East China's Shandong province with remote sensing services for land survey, urban construction, agriculture, forestry, energy, disaster prevention and reduction. Other satellites onboard the rocket were the Foshan 1, the Zhong'an Guotong 1, Apocalypse Constellation 09, Originspace NEO 1, Taijing 2-01, Golden Bauhinia 1-01 and Golden Bauhinia 1-02. They will be used to test technologies in satellite platform design, real-time imaging and observation, data acquisition and transmission, or to offer observations of small celestial bodies and remote sensing services. The CZ-6 is scheduled for 4 flights in 2021.
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For better details on the satellites and the mission - see the Chinese language website of 'spaceflightfans'
http://www.spaceflightfans.cn/92600.html
and here:
http://www.spaceflightfans.cn/92596.html

27 April 2021
Blaine Curcio of Orbital Gateway Consulting and Jean Deville of The China Aerospace Blog are reporting for SpaceWatch.Global on China's main space events of the last week. This time the two experts cover 4 recent topics: 1. The 6th China Space Day; 2. ChinaSat's statements about China’s Constellation Plans; 3. SpaceTY and Intane Optics complete China’s first private satellite-ground laser comms experiment, and 4. Tianbing Aerospace Announces an Intelligent Rocket Manufacturing Base in Suzhou. Like always: this is an highly interesting and informative read or podcast!!!
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Watch the episode on YouTube...

26 April 2021
CASIC plans to produce a reusable aerospace plane and put it into commercial flight by 2030. The plane will take off from and land on a conventional runway like a jetliner and will be capable of flying in near space or even into outer space. The low-cost aircraft will have high-quality safety features and will be used to fulfill a wide range of operations such as space tourism, astronaut commuting, satellite deployment, cargo transportation and emergency rescue, the State-owned defense conglomerate said in an introduction board in front of a scale model of the new craft, which is on display at the 2021 China Space Conference. The company said it has conducted a key flight test by a conceptual demonstration prototype to verify the propulsion shift mechanism between ramjet and rocket engine.
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