Tag: China
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Why Are Satellites “Oxidized” in Near Vacuum? How Aggressive Is Atomic Oxygen and How Can It Be Prevented?
A satellite entering low Earth orbit (LEO) may lead people to assume that there is almost no atmosphere outside, so how could oxygen still exist? However, for spacecraft operating in LEO, oxygen is not only present but can become one of the most challenging environmental factors for materials. It can gradually thin polyimide films, create…
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Hainan Could Become the Hub of China’s Commercial Space Future
The global launch industry is entering a new phase, one defined less by whether rockets can reach orbit and more by how quickly launch capacity can scale. Firefly Aerospace CEO Jason Kim recently pointed to a widening imbalance between the number of satellites waiting to fly and the amount of launch capacity available to carry…
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Chang Guang Satellite Unveils Results from World’s Largest Stereo Mapping Satellite Cluster
Commercial space is entering a new phase of large-scale development, with the number of satellites in orbit continuing to rise and applications expanding into an increasingly diverse range of industries. Ultimately, however, the value of the industry is realized through data applications and services. Among these applications, 3D stereo mapping has become an important field…
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What Does “Y” Mean in Chinese Rocket Designations?
Whenever China launches a rocket, its name often includes the Chinese character “遥” (Yao, Y). Examples include the Long March 2F Y23, Long March 5 Y6, and Zhuque-3 Y2 launch vehicles. So what exactly does “Y” mean, and where did this naming convention come from? “Y” is short for “Yaoce” (遥测, telemetry), and its origins…
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China Reports Largest Porphyry Copper-Gold Find in Middle-Lower Yangtze, Opening New Exploration Frontier
China has reported a major copper-gold exploration breakthrough in Anhui province, identifying what researchers describe as the largest porphyry copper-gold deposit yet found in the Middle-Lower Yangtze region and challenging conventional assumptions about where large porphyry systems can form. China’s Ministry of Natural Resources announced the latest exploration results on Sept. 1. The breakthrough centers…
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Commercial Space: China’s Domestic Chips Are Winning This Space Race
Ground-based AI chips are a game built around Nvidia’s CUDA ecosystem, and any challenger must contend with developer ecosystems, compute benchmarks and framework compatibility. But in space, an opportunity has emerged to reshuffle the AI compute chip landscape — the competitive dynamics of space-based computing differ from those on the ground, and Nvidia holds no…
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Pallas-1 Y1: Another New Rocket from a Chinese Private Launch Company Reaches Orbit
At 10:00 a.m. on September 1, 2026, Pallas-1 Y1, a medium-to-large reusable liquid-propellant launch vehicle developed by Galactic Energy, lifted off from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Test Zone. The rocket successfully entered its designated orbit as planned, performed normally throughout the flight, and achieved all test objectives, marking the successful completion of the mission.…
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How Low Can Satellites Fly? New Opportunities in VLEO and the Companies Already Moving In
Very low Earth orbit, or VLEO, is not a new type of orbital geometry. It is simply the lower portion of low Earth orbit, where satellites fly closer to Earth and encounter a comparatively denser residual atmosphere. Commercial space companies are paying renewed attention to this regime for a straightforward reason: Earth observation satellites can…
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Star–Air–Ground–Borehole Exploration Technology Leads to New Breakthrough in Gangdese Mineral Prospecting
Recently, the China Aero Geophysical and Remote Sensing Center for Natural Resources’ Qinghai–Tibet Plateau airborne geophysical exploration team discovered the Changlong iron-rich tin polymetallic deposit for the first time in an unexplored area of the western Gangdese metallogenic belt. The discovery took just six months from the initial flight survey to the confirmation of mineralization,…
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Top ten frontier scientific issues in the field of remote sensing science and technology
In early July, Academician Zhang Bing and his co-authors published an article in the Journal of Remote Sensing, summarizing and discussing 10 frontier scientific questions in remote sensing science and technology. Original article: https://www.ygxb.ac.cn/zh/article/doi/10.11834/jrs.20266221/ Abstract Remote sensing is a fundamental technology for understanding the Earth system. The integration of coordinated satellite-airborne-tower-ground observations with artificial intelligence,…