Tag: China
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China launches Long March 5, one of the world’s most powerful rockets
The Long March 5 rocket takes off at 1243 GMT (8:43 a.m. EDT) on Thursday. Credit: Xinhua China’s heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket fired into space on a successful inaugural flight Thursday, debuting a brand new launcher that can carry twice the payload of any other Chinese booster and setting a keystone for the country’s…
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Long March 5 heavy-lifter ready to join China’s rocket inventory
China is ready to debut a heavy-lifting rocket rivaling the biggest boosters in the world Thursday, paving the way for a backlog of missions to loft massive space station modules, send deep space probes to the moon and Mars, and perhaps deploy commercial satellites. The Long March 5 rocket is bigger than anything else in…
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Chinese astronauts halfway through country’s longest space mission
The Banxing 2 satellite deployed from Tiangong 2 captured this view of the mini-space station from above. Credit: Xinhua/China Academy of Sciences/China Manned Space Engineering Office Two Chinese astronauts are busy with medical experiments and other duties as they near the halfway mark of a month-long stay aboard the Tiangong 2 space lab, according to…
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Chinese space lab deploys compact satellite for external surveys
This view of the Tiangong 2 and Shenzhou 11 docked complex was recorded Sunday and downlinked to Earth on Tuesday by the Banxing 2 micro-satellite. Credit: CCTV A companion satellite ejected from China’s orbiting Tiangong 2 research module has snapped unique views of the space lab as two astronauts inside press on with experiments and…
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China snaps selfies of its space lab
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…
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Shenzhou-11 docks with Tiangong-2 in latest Chinese space station mission
The Chinese spacecraft Shenzhou-11 – and its crew of two taikonauts – has successfully docked with the Tiangong-2 space module at 19:24 UTC. The docking begins a month long mission in which the crew will conduct a series of experiments aimed at progressing China’s ambitions in space. Tiangong-2: The launch was followed around the world and gained huge…
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Shenzhou 11 glides to orbital link-up with Chinese space lab
Updated after crew’s ingress of Tiangong 2. The Tiangong 2 space lab is pictured in this video frame from a camera aboard Shenzhou 11. The two spacecraft linked up on a night pass in orbit. Credit: CCTV Two days after blasting off on a Long March rocket, a Shenzhou spaceship carrying two Chinese astronauts linked…
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Chinese astronauts launch on month-long space mission
The Shenzhou 11 spacecraft lifted off at 2330 GMT (7:30 p.m. EDT) Sunday, or 7:30 a.m. Beijing time Monday. Credit: Xinhua Two Chinese military pilots rode a Long March 2F rocket into orbit Sunday, heading for the Tiangong 2 research lab to conduct experiments and practice procedures to be used on China’s future space station.…
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Chinese spacecraft poised for launch with two astronauts
Astronauts Jing Haipeng (left) and Chen Dong (right) will fly in space for 33 days aboard Shenzhou 11. They were introduced to the media early Sunday. Credit: Xinhua China is gearing up to launch two astronauts on a month-long expedition to the country’s new orbiting space lab module Sunday. Officials lifted a news blackout on…
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Key events during Shenzhou 11’s ascent to orbit
It will take less than 10 minutes for a Long March 2F rocket to send two astronauts inside the Shenzhou 11 space capsule on course toward a docking with China’s Tiangong 2 space lab. The 191-foot-tall (58-meter) rocket is scheduled to blast off from the Jiuquan space center in northwestern China’s Inner Mongolia territory at…