20 October 2020
Funky in China? Yes, indeed, Jean Deville and Blaine Curcio have packed a bag full with funky Chinese space projects. They realise that funky can mean: Plain old funky. This refers to projects that are funky in every sense of the word - funky technologies, business models, etc. This includes space planes, solar harvesting, and electromagnetic rockets. Or funky can mean: Funky in an "only in China" way. This refers to companies buying orbital slots as a way of moving money out of China, or online video giants that can justify buying their own EO satellite.
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19 October 2020
CASIC (China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp) has made many strides in its commercial space businesses, according to Fu Zhimin, Chief Technical Officer at CASIC. He said at the opening ceremony of the 6th China International Commercial Aerospace Forum (CCAF), which opened in Hubei's provincial capital of Wuhan in the morning of 19 October, that his company has made many achievements in carrier rocket and satellite industries.
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The two day forum is live streamed on the conference webportal: https://ccaf.casicloud.com/index.html
The replays of the conference talks of the first day are already available.
18 October 2020
The 6th China (International) Commercial Aerospace Forum (CCAF) will start on 19 October at 9:00 h BJT (01:00 h UTC/GMT) with the Opening Ceremony. The two day forum will be live streamed on the conference webportal: https://ccaf.casicloud.com/index.html
The replays of the conference talks will be available after the presentation is finished. Already on 18 October, Huang Zhicheng of Foresight Think Tank gave a Cloud Course on the topic "Commercial Aerospace leads the new era of space economy". He summarised the current status in the global commercial space sector. The promotional video of the Wuhan National Aerospace Industrial Base and the promotion video of the 6th CCAF can be viewed here:
https://ccaf.casicloud.com/#pageAdvertiseVideo
09 October 2020
China's Lunar Exploration Programme released the 7th batch of science data from the CE-4 mission on 9 October, which contains the data from the 10th lunar day of 4 science payloads:
lander: low-frequency astronomy instrument
Yutu 2 rover: lunar radar, panoramic camera, infrared imaging spectrometer.
The batch comprised in total 360 data files and a total amount of data of 3.15 GB.
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16 October 2020
Commercial space leaders, the president of the IAF, and young Chinese space entrepreneurs gathered on CGTN prime-time daily talk show "Dialogue" to discuss the "New Era in Commercial Space" and to share their insights on the quickly rising commercial space sector. "We're facing a high market demand for satellite launches … They are already queuing, waiting to be sent into space," said Kevin Xu, General Manager of Global Marketing and Services of LandSpace, developing the Zhuque 2 liquid launcher, which is expected to become operational next year to meet the market demand for lower cost launch services.
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On 19 October, the 6th CCAF - China (International) Commercial Aerospace Forum is about to start. For detailed information on the agenda, the speakers and their topics, have a look at the conference website:
https://ccaf.casicloud.com/index_en.html
15 October 2020
But Chinese observers expected competition in space exploration between the US and China to heat up. Zhou Chenming, a researcher from the Yuan Wang military science and technology institute in Beijing, said this would happen as more private companies from the US invested in the extraction of lunar resources.
Beijing was also sceptical about the accords, said Zhao Tong, a senior fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy. “China traditionally believes that space exploration or moon missions are done by state actors,” he said. “From a nation’s point of view, there will always be concerns over questions of sovereignty and security.”
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