Tag: China

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Space council targets regulations – and China

Mike Pence
With NASA’s Orion deep-space capsule serving as a backdrop, Vice President Mike Pence speaks at a meeting of the National Space Council at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (NASA via YouTube)

Space industry deregulation, and the potential perils posed by China’s space program, shared the spotlight at today’s meeting of the National Space Council, presided over by Vice President Mike Pence.

Commercial space ventures and NASA’s vision for deep-space exploration also got shout-outs when members of the council, newly named advisers and other VIPs gathered inside the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“As we continue to push further into our solar system, new businesses and entire enterprises will be built to seize the infinite possibilities before us,” Pence declared. “And there will be no limit to the jobs and prosperity that will be created across this country.”

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Chinese team clones monkeys from fetal cells

Zhong Zhong
Zhong Zhong is a cloned monkey. (Chinese Academy of Sciences / Qiang Sun and Mu-ming Poo)bio

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai have produced identical primate clones using the same procedure that brought Dolly the sheep into the world more than two decades earlier.

The procedure, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, involves removing the nucleus of an egg cell and replacing it with nuclear material from a body cell.

Chinese researchers described the experiment in a research paper published today by the journal Cell.

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Boeing and China seal $37B in airplane deals

Xi and Trump
Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump greet children in Beijing. (White House Photo)

With President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping looking on, Boeing and China Aviation Supplies Holding Co. today signed an agreement for the purchase of 300 airplanes valued at more than $37 billion.

The agreement provided a public relations boost to all sides: Trump and Boeing could herald a win for U.S. exports, while Xi could soften China’s image in the minds of the American public and policymakers.

“China is a valued customer and key partner, and we’re proud that Boeing airplanes will be a part of its fleet growth for years to come,” Kevin McAllister, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said in a statement. “Boeing and China have a strong history of working together based on great mutual respect, and these orders build on that foundation.”

But Boeing didn’t say how many of the 260 single-aisle and 40 twin-aisle airplanes were the subject of previous agreements, repackaged for public consumption. Bloomberg News quoted unnamed sources as saying that most of the planes were in fact parts of deals going back to 2013.

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Clobotics revs up drone data venture with $5M

Drone inspection
A drone inspects turbines at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s wind farm in California’s Solano County. (SMUD via YouTube)

Small drones, big data and computer vision: That’s the tech-frontier trifecta for Clobotics, a Shanghai startup that says it’s raised $5 million in seed funding and opened a research and development center in the Seattle area.

“This is where I took the plunge,” Clobotics co-founder George Yan, a former executive at Microsoft China and the Chinese drone venture Ehang, told GeekWire.

Yan said Clobotics (“cloud” plus “robotics”) has been more than a decade in the making. The venture aims to capitalize on the capabilities of aerial robotics and artificial intelligence to automate the task of evaluating the condition of hard-to-reach infrastructure.

GGV Capital, a U.S.-Chinese venture capital firm, is leading a $5 million financing round to get Clobotics off the ground, Yan said.

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A new record for quantum entanglement

Quantum entanglement satellite experiment
A schematic shows how China’s Micius satellite could theoretically enable secure quantum communications. (SMOC Graphic)

Chinese researchers report that they’ve set a new distance record for quantum teleportation through space, the phenomenon that Albert Einstein once scoffed at as “spooky action at a distance.”

The technology isn’t yet ready for prime time, but eventually it could open the way for a new type of unbreakable encryption scheme based on the weirdness of quantum physics.

The experiment, reported today in the journal Science, involved transmitting pairs of entangled photons from China’s orbiting Micius satellite to ground stations in the mountains of the Tibetan plateau, separated by more than 745 miles (1,200 kilometers).

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China’s ivory ban marks big step for elephants

Elephant
The Great Elephant Census documents a decline in the species. (Great Elephant Census via YouTube)

China’s pledge to shut down commercial trade in ivory within a year comes as welcome news to conservationists who have been fighting for years to save endangered elephants – including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

The Chinese government’s announcement on Friday laid out a plan to close domestic trade in elephant ivory by the end of 2017, following up on a commitment made by President Xi Jinping in 2015. The ban will be phased in starting in March, and will apply to physical sales as well as online transactions.

China already has been taking steps to counter the illegal trade, including widely publicized ceremonies during which authorities have crushed down tons of elephant tusks and carved ivory. The country is nevertheless considered the home of the world’s largest ivory market.

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How China plans to put rover on moon’s far side

China's lunar rover
An artist’s conception shows the Chang’e 4 spacecraft landing on the moon. (CCTV via YouTube)

China’s latest white paper on space exploration confirms the country’s plans to send a rover to the moon’s far side in 2018 and put a rover on Mars in 2020.

Today’s white paper, released by the State Council Information Office, says the Chang’e 4 mission will “conduct in-situ and roving detection and relay communications at Earth-moon L2 point” in 2018, the official China Daily newspaper reported.

In 2012, NASA’s Grail probes crash-landed on the moon’s far side – the so-called “dark side” that never faces Earth. However, no spacecraft has made a soft landing on the moon’s normally hidden half.

Communicating with such a spacecraft would require using a relay satellite, such as the one that China plans to send to the L2 gravitational balance point beyond the moon for Chang’e 4.

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China snaps selfies of its space lab

Shenzhou 11 and Tiangong
A “selfie” from China’s Banxing 2 inspection satellite shows the Shenzhou 11 spaceship docked to the Tiangong 2 orbital lab. (Credit: CAS via CCTV)

China’s Tiangong 2 space lab has a paparazzi traveling alongside it, in the form of a picture-snapping satellite that’s the size of a desktop printer.

The satellite, Banxing 2, was released from the lab over the weekend and has already captured hundreds of images of Tiangong 2 with the Shenzhou 11 spacecraft docked to it.

Testing what’s been called an orbital “selfie stick” is one of the prime objectives of the 30-day Shenzhou mission currently being conducted by Chinese astronauts Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong.

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U.S.-Russian trio moves into space station

Soyuz craft
A Russian Soyuz craft approaches the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA)

Three new crew members were welcomed aboard the International Space Station today, just in time to help out with a big moving job.

NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and his Russian crewmates, Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko, floated out of their Russian Soyuz capsule and through the hatch into the station’s Zvezda service module at 5:20 a.m. PT.

They went through a gauntlet of handshakes and hugs from the three spacefliers who have been living aboard the orbital complex since July: NASA’s Kate Rubins, Japan’s Takuya Onishi and Russia’s Anatoly Ivanishin, the station’s commander.

“We had a great flight,” Kimbrough said during a post-arrival news conference.

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China sends two spacefliers to orbital lab

Long March launch
A Chinese Long March 2F rocket rises from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, sending the Shenzhou 11 spacecraft with two Chinese spacefliers into orbit. (Credit: CCTV)

Two Chinese astronauts are on their way to an orbiting laboratory for a monthlong mission aimed at preparing the way for a full-fledged Chinese space station.

Veteran military pilots Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong lifted off in the Shenzhou 11 spacecraft atop a Long March 2F rocket at China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 7:30 a.m. Beijing time Oct. 17 (4:30 p.m. PT Oct. 16). Jing, a veteran of two earlier space missions, is the commander for what’s expected to be the longest-lasting of China’s six crewed spaceflights to date.

“It is any astronaut’s dream and pursuit to be able to perform many space missions,” The Associated Press quoted Jing as saying during a pre-launch briefing.

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