Today, China successfully launched its most ambitious mission to the Moon to date — this one designed to bring a handful of lunar rocks back to Earth before the end of the year. If successful, it’ll be the first time in nearly half a century that dirt from the Moon has been returned to Earth and the first time that China has retrieved materials from another world.

The mission, called Chang’e 5, is the latest in a long line of lunar missions that China has been conducting over the last decade. In 2013, the country made its first soft landing on the Moon with Chang’e 3, making China just one of three nations to put a spacecraft on the lunar surface. Then in December 2018, China launched Chang’e 4 and successfully put a lander and rover on the far side of the Moon in early 2019 — a feat that no other nation has accomplished.

SO FAR, ONLY TWO NATIONS HAVE EVER RETURNED MATERIALS FROM THE MOON

Now with Chang’e 5, China plans to bring back samples of the Moon. So far, only two nations — the United States and the former Soviet Union — have ever returned materials from the Moon. Chang’e 5 could soon be next, and lessons learned from this mission could put the country on course for even more complex flights to the Moon in the future.

“This is one thing that the Chinese space program is very good at,” Andrew Jones, a freelance reporter specializing in China’s space program, tells The Verge. “They set incremental targets and goals, and they build on what they’ve achieved and made more ambitious targets.”

But first, a lot of things have to go right, and Chang’e 5 is perhaps the most complicated mission that China has ever launched. For one thing, the mission is fairly heavy, with all of the hardware needed for the roundtrip Moon flight weighing in at about 8.2 metric tons or around 18,000 pounds. To get Chang’e 5 en route to the Moon, China used its most powerful rocket, the Long March 5. The rocket took off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site located in south China.
The Long March 5 lofted a total of four robotic spacecraft for Chang’e 5, which will work together to bring back between 2 to 4 kilograms of the lunar sample back to Earth, according to Jones. The quartet starts off its journey together, traveling to the Moon in a big pack. One of the four includes a service spacecraft that will help provide solar power and propel the group to the Moon. After entering the Moon’s orbit, two of the spacecraft — a lander and a vehicle to take off from the lander — will break away and descend to the surface. The lander will then use instruments to drill into the Moon, passing along the material it collects to the ascent vehicle sitting on top.

That ascent vehicle will then act as a mini-rocket, taking off from the Moon and meeting up with the hardware still in lunar orbit. Once it docks with the service spacecraft, the lunar sample will pass into the fourth spacecraft — a capsule designed to land back on Earth. The trio will then leave lunar orbit and head back to Earth. Eventually, the return capsule will break away with its precious materials inside. Since it will be coming in so fast from the Moon, the capsule will actually bounce off the Earth’s atmosphere once before diving toward the planet and eventually landing in Inner Mongolia.

IT SHOULD BE A QUICK MISSION, LASTING JUST 23 DAYS OR SO

All in all, it should be a quick mission, lasting just 23 days or so from launch to landing of the lunar material, Jones says. That’s because Chang’e 5 is not designed to survive the harsh lunar night, a two-week period that occurs every month when part of the Moon’s surface is plunged into darkness and temperatures can drop well below -208 degrees Fahrenheit (-130 degrees Celsius). To survive such an extreme environment, the surface spacecraft would need to be equipped with special heating instruments — such as radioisotope generators that radioactively decay over time and generate warmth. Previous Chang’e missions included these generators to survive the lunar night, but such materials are missing on Chang’e 5 since this is designed to be a quick “grab and go” mission.
That means in less than a month, China could bring back the first samples of the Moon returned to Earth since the Cold War era. US astronauts famously brought back lunar rocks collected during the Apollo missions in the 1960s and ’70s, while the former Soviet Union performed a handful of successful lunar sample return missions in the 1970s. In fact, the last time lunar rocks came back to Earth occurred in 1976 with the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 robotic probe.

Chang’e 5 is targeting a particularly enticing part of the Moon called Oceanus Procellarum. This unexplored area has relatively few craters on its surface compared to other parts of the Moon. One theory is that volcanic activity may have occurred in this area late in the Moon’s life, smoothing away craters that were there before. Getting samples from this region could provide scientists with a better understanding of when this volcanic activity might have occurred, providing a better snapshot of how the Moon formed and evolved over time.
“It’s a big deal for the science community in China, and also the data will be keenly followed by scientists internationally,” Jones says.

The complexity of Chang’e 5 is also a deliberate choice for China, according to Jones, as it will allow the country to test out how to rendezvous and dock spacecraft in orbit around the Moon. China could have opted for the ascent vehicle to take the lunar samples all the way back to Earth. But Jones notes that the meetup in lunar orbit is meant to test out capabilities needed on future missions. A mission designed to return samples from Mars could certainly draw from Chang’e 5. But it’s also important to note that this mission is very similar in its flight profile to that of NASA’s Apollo missions, which used similar techniques for putting people on the Moon.

“This is much more of an Apollo kind of mission profile than it was for the Soviet robotic lunar sample return,” says Jones. “So the idea is that they’re playing out and practicing for future crewed missions to the Moon.”

Source: theverge

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China on Tuesday launched the final satellite in its Beidou constellation that emulates the U.S. Global Positioning System, marking a further step in the country’s advance as a major space power.

The launch of the satellite onboard a Long March-3 rocket was broadcast live from the satellite launch base of Xichang, deep in the mountains of southwestern China, shortly before 10 a.m. About half an hour later, the satellite was deployed in orbit and extended its solar panels to provide its energy.

An initial launch scheduled for last week was scrubbed after checks revealed unspecified technical problems.

The third iteration of the Beidou Navigation Satellite System promises to provide global coverage for timing and navigation, offering an alternative to Russia’s GLONASS and the European Galileo systems, as well as America’s GPS.

China’s space program has developed rapidly over the past two decades as the government devotes major resources toward developing independent high-tech capabilities — and even dominating in fields such as 5G data processing.

The first version of Beidou, meaning “Big Dipper,” was decommissioned in 2012. Future plans call for a smarter, more accessible and more integrated system with Beidou at its core, to come online by 2035.

In 2003, China became just the third country to independently launch a crewed space mission and has since constructed an experimental space station and sent a pair of rovers to the surface of the moon.

Future plans call for a fully functioning permanent space station and a possible crewed flight to the moon, with its first attempt to send an orbiter and rover to Mars possibly coming as early as next month. If successful, it would be the only other country besides the U.S. to land on Earth’s closest planetary neighbor.

The program has suffered some setbacks, including launch failures, and has had limited cooperation with other countries’ space efforts, in part because of U.S. objections to its close connections to the Chinese military.

Preparations have started for the launch of a small satellite named Orion Space, which is the first to be built in Nepal. The company plans to launch the satellite from SpaceX's Falcon Nine rocket in December this year.

The construction of the satellite was started in 2017 with the active participation of Nepali students, engineers, and amateur radio operators. Weighing in at 250 grams, this Pico satellite can fit in the palm of one hand.

Its alternative name is Nepal PQ One. Its length, width, and height are equal to five centimeters. Engineer Saurabh Paudyal said that Sanosat was built with a space mission to be used as a digital repeater. The satellite will repeat the message taken from one place to another.

Its other mission is to measure radiation in the betaga of space. The satellite will measure the intensity of radiation in space and send it to Earth.

The newly established satellite will be operated by MSAT Nepal and MSAT Spain. Orion Nepal has called on amateur radio users to receive signals from its satellite.

It will promote the amateur radio community in Nepal. The use of radiofrequency i.e. spectrum to exchange messages non-profit and non-commercial is the use of amateur radio.

The company is confident that the success of this project will show the potential of Nepali youth. It will also demonstrate the ability of young people to build and launch home satellites, even with the limited resources available.

Over a period of three years, the company has developed various versions of the satellite. The company has completed the engineering model and tested all the hardware and software including the ground station. It is currently in the process of assembling a satellite flight model.

All its hardware and software has been designed, soldered, tested, and programmed in Nepal. The satellite is connected to an onboard computer, electrical power subsystem, communication subsystem, and payload. These include advanced payloads such as cameras, accelerometers, and gyroscopes.

Students can program it freely. Also, you can set the mission according to your needs. For communication, it uses a communication chip based on Laura and non-Laura.

But before launching, it is essential for the satellite to test whether the rocket can withstand the hostile environment due to vibration and radiation and temperature disturbances after launch. During the test, the satellite has to be prepared in a space-stimulating environment (thermal vacuum chamber) and a vibrating table to create a rocket launch-stimulating environment.

But since there is no such testing facility in Nepal, reservations have to be made. Prices range from 1,000 to 5,000 per day. Thus, the test and transportation of the satellite will cost about 10 thousand US dollars.

The company, which was established with the objective of starting satellite building in Nepal and imparting training on satellite construction, has so far been imparting training in various engineering colleges in Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

 

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Results of public beta testing of SpaceX’s Starlink, which provides global internet coverage from space are out. Users who took the test have confirmed blazingly fast results. To take the beta test, users had to purchase the Starlink ground equipment for $499 and along with an additional monthly fee of $99 for services.

One of the users, who took the test, posted on Reddit that he got the streaming 1440p and 4K with zero buffering on YouTube. He wrote, “Latency averages about 34ms, I'm seeing some jitter increase when obstacles are in the path. It's on the roof with the ridgeline mount. I have a couple of trees in the way, but getting steady high speeds. Noticed a couple of interruptions, probably from satellite transitions, but almost 100% steady since initial setup.

I actually uploaded this post using Starlink.”

“As a few different people are looking for details on this, interruptions are about ten to fifteen seconds and seem to happen every few minutes. I haven't noticed enough repetition to determine, but I'm suspecting it may be when the satellite goes behind the few trees inside the obstruction area rather than satellite handoffs. The app claims Starlink has not been obstructed recently, though, so I'm uncertain,” it added.

Starlink had earlier sent invites to people who had signed for the beta program. A user on Reddit had shared the key points Starlink had mentioned about its Internet plan. As per the post on Reddit, the program called Better Than Nothing Beta offered estimated speeds between 50mbps to 150mbps, estimated latency of 20ms to 40ms. The phased array antenna and the router would cost a user $499 while the monthly subscription would cost around $99.

“With performance that far surpasses that of traditional satellite internet, and a global network unbounded by ground infrastructure limitations, Starlink will deliver high-speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable. Starlink is targeting service in the Northern U.S. and Canada in 2020, rapidly expanding to near-global coverage of the populated world by 2021,” the Starlink website reads.

Elon Musk plans new laws for Mars

Musk had revealed his plans of creating self-sustaining cities on Mars. The reports state that future colonies created by SpaceX would use Starlink satellites to provide internet connections to people. Starlink services provided to Earth or Moon will be governed by the laws of the State of California. “For services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities,” the governing law states.

Source: indiatoday

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