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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday September 15 2016, @01:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-no-moon! dept.

China is scheduled to launch a space station into orbit in less than an hour. According to Ars Technica:

China will take its next step toward a large space station on Thursday, when it intends to launch the Tiangong-2 laboratory into orbit. The 8.5-ton, 10.4-meter-long facility will launch from the Jiuquan launch center in the Gobi Desert, aboard a Long March 2-F rocket. The launch is set for 10:04am ET (14:04pm UTC) Thursday, and live video is available.

This space station, "Heavenly Palace 2," will be China's second after it launched the similarly sized Tiangong-1 laboratory in 2011. Following this week's launch, China plans to send two taikonauts to Tiangong-2 in four to six weeks aboard a Shenzhou-11 spacecraft. They will live there for about a month, testing out the lab's life support systems and performing scientific research. According to China's official news service, Xinhua, those experiments will involve areas of medicine, physics, and biology, as well as quantum key transmission, space atomic clock, and solar storm research.

China has plans within the next decade to send up an even larger space station. This, on top of plans to establish a moon colony, as well.

Also at Spaceflight Now.

[Update] The launch was a success — coverage at: phys.org and Nature.


Original Submission

Related Stories

Space Race 2.0: China May Already be Testing an EmDrive in Orbit 25 comments

A Chinese newspaper and other sources are reporting that China is already testing an EmDrive thruster in space, aboard the Tiangong-2 space station:

[Researchers] in China have announced that they've already been testing the controversial drive in low-Earth orbit, and they're looking into using the EM Drive to power their satellites as soon as possible.

Big disclaimer here - all we have to go on right now is a press conference announcement [archive.is] and an article from a government-sponsored Chinese newspaper (and the country doesn't have the best track record when it comes to trustworthy research).

[...] But what the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) team is saying also corresponds with information provided to IB Times from an anonymous source. According to their informant, China already has an EM Drive on board its version of the International Space Station, the space laboratory Tiangong-2.

[Continues...]

China's First Cargo Spacecraft Docks With the Tiangong 2 Space Station; US Govt Rejoice (NOT) 22 comments

The Guardian reports on the Tianzhou-1's, China's first automated cargo spacecraft, first mission to the station:

China's first cargo spacecraft docked successfully with the Tiangong-2 space lab on Saturday, the official Xinhua news agency reported, marking a major step towards Beijing's goal of establishing a permanently manned space station by 2022. ...

The Tianzhou-1 cargo resupply spacecraft made the automated docking process with the orbiting space lab after it had taken off on Thursday evening from the Wenchang satellite launch centre in the southern island province of Hainan....

The cargo spacecraft mission provides an "important technological basis" to build a Chinese space station, state media have said. It can reportedly carry six tonnes of goods, two tonnes of fuel and can fly unmanned for three months.

Seems like Cold War era again:

President Xi Jinping has prioritised advancing China's space programme to strengthen national security.,,,

The US Defense Department has highlighted China's increasing space capabilities, saying it was pursuing activities aimed at preventing other nations from using space-based assets in a crisis.

China insists it has only peaceful ambitions in space, but has tested anti-satellite missiles.

2007 - Chinese anti-satellite missile test
1985 - American anti-satellite missile test
Chinese exclusion policy of NASA

Related: China Launched its Second "Heavenly Palace" Thursday Morning [Updated]
China's Shenzhou 11 Docks at Tiangong 2 Space Station
Space Race 2.0: China May Already be Testing an EmDrive in Orbit


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 15 2016, @02:23PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday September 15 2016, @02:23PM (#402278) Journal

    It's in orbit.

    The launcher will initially place the Tiangong 2 spacecraft in an egg-shaped transfer orbit with a perigee, or low point, about 120 miles (200 kilometers) above Earth. The module’s on-board thrusters will raise its orbit to an altitude of 238 miles (384 kilometers) in the days after launch.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 15 2016, @02:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 15 2016, @02:43PM (#402292)

    How is the dim sum?

    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday September 15 2016, @03:06PM

      by mhajicek (51) on Thursday September 15 2016, @03:06PM (#402302)

      "Some you win, and dim sum you loose."

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      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 15 2016, @04:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 15 2016, @04:13PM (#402338)

    Can somebody with more knowledge comment on how difficult and impressive this is?

    For example, this "space station" could be a modest "small room the size of your average compact car orbiting for a few weeks, expected to deorbit within a few months sent up as an experiment"... or it could be a multi-room complex which will survive for years and is expected for multiple return trips and continued use."

    The article says it's about 40 tons, but I have no context to understand what that means. Is this amazing, impressive, or meh?

  • (Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Thursday September 15 2016, @04:23PM

    by Fnord666 (652) on Thursday September 15 2016, @04:23PM (#402344) Homepage
    One item to note is that Tiangong-2 will not be docking with or have anything to do with Tiangong-1. Similarly it is not planned to be a part of their larger space station which they plan to begin launching in 2018.

    Wu told reporters Wednesday that the Tiangong 1 spacecraft stopped sending data to Earth in March, and the module is expected to make an uncontrolled re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere in late 2017.

  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday September 15 2016, @04:25PM

    by TheRaven (270) on Thursday September 15 2016, @04:25PM (#402346) Journal
    Apparently this story was posted at 01:35AM. It wasn't posted at 01:35AM UTC and it wasn't posted at 01:35AM my local time zone (I'd checked the site since then and it wasn't here). The green site shows the date in my local time zone, but this site seems to show them in some arbitrary time zone (where the server is hosted?) and not tell me when, so I have no idea when it was actually posted. The story says that 14:04 UTC is 'within the next hour', so I can guess the time zone for this story, but it's not very helpful in the general case.
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    • (Score: 2) by martyb on Thursday September 15 2016, @08:49PM

      by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 15 2016, @08:49PM (#402467) Journal

      Apparently this story was posted at 01:35AM. It wasn't posted at 01:35AM UTC and it wasn't posted at 01:35AM my local time zone (I'd checked the site since then and it wasn't here). The green site shows the date in my local time zone, but this site seems to show them in some arbitrary time zone (where the server is hosted?) and not tell me when, so I have no idea when it was actually posted. The story says that 14:04 UTC is 'within the next hour', so I can guess the time zone for this story, but it's not very helpful in the general case.

      tl;dr Logged-in users have control over what time zone is used to display story dates/times.

      Steps to change your setting:

      1. Login to SoylentNews
      2. Click on Preferences [soylentnews.org] in the "Navigation" slashbox on the left-hand side.
      3. Click on the "Homepage" tab.
      4. Scroll down a bit.
      5. Choose your: "Date/Time Format".
      6. Choose your: "Time Zone"
      7. Choose your: "Daylight Savings Time" [sic]
      8. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the "[Save]" button.

      It looks to me that you currently have selected:
      Date/Time Format: "Sunday March 21, @10:00AM"
      Time Zone: "-1200 International Date Line West"

      At some point, I'd like to see the site support a free-format date/time selection (ala strftime(); e.g. "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"), but there's more to implementing it on this site than first meets the eye. Maybe some other 'time'. =)

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      • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday September 16 2016, @01:45PM

        by TheRaven (270) on Friday September 16 2016, @01:45PM (#402766) Journal

        Okay, I've now done that, but it only lets me specify a base UTC offset (not a time zone) and then whether I want DST on, off, or automatic. Automatic doesn't work, which isn't surprising because a UTC offset isn't a time zone and so is not enough information to know whether I'm currently in DST.

        To be honest, I'd be happy with it just displaying UTC (and labelling it UTC), but this is the web. My web browser knows my time zone. Other websites manage to localise the time automatically - it's not that hard - so why is it so difficult for this one?

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        • (Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday September 28 2016, @01:48PM

          by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 28 2016, @01:48PM (#407376) Journal

          Okay, I've now done that, but it only lets me specify a base UTC offset (not a time zone) and then whether I want DST on, off, or automatic. Automatic doesn't work, which isn't surprising because a UTC offset isn't a time zone and so is not enough information to know whether I'm currently in DST.

          To be honest, I'd be happy with it just displaying UTC (and labelling it UTC), but this is the web. My web browser knows my time zone. Other websites manage to localise the time automatically - it's not that hard - so why is it so difficult for this one?

          This is well beyond my area of expertise. I had previously reached out to other devs but it seems there's been no response to your query. Am reaching out to them again.

          The labeling of a timestamp as being UTC may have some UI layout issues on the site, but is probably the easiest change to make.

          As for auto-detecting the user's timezone, I am curious as to how that could be done. In my particular case, lookups based on my IP address incorrectly determine that I am coming from the midwest USA. So, there is a question of accuracy. Secondly, it would seem to me that implementing auto-detection would require Javascript (please correct me if there is some other way!) The community has strongly spoken out against requiring Javscript to implement features of the site.

          It would be very helpful if you could provide links to site(s) that implement auto-timezone detection.

          --
          Wit is intellect, dancing.
        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 29 2016, @01:01AM

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday September 29 2016, @01:01AM (#407684) Homepage Journal

          We do adjust for DST, we just don't adjust what we call your zone when we do. So, during DST in Central you're given the correct (-5) offset even though the label says -6. We should probably be more clear about that.

          If you want actual UTC, set your zone to +0000 Universal Coordinated, the "U" and "C" from UTC ("Time" being redundant in this context).

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          • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday September 29 2016, @08:29AM

            by TheRaven (270) on Thursday September 29 2016, @08:29AM (#407784) Journal
            This doesn't make sense. UTC is a time zone, it is not a locale. To do DST, you need a locale. In Britain, for example, we use UTC for half of the year and BST for the other half. The vertical stripe of countries that use UTC as their base time zone includes ones that don't do DST at all, and ones that do DST in the other direction (it turns out that there are countries south of the equator, a fact that appears lost on a number of North American developers).
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  • (Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Thursday September 15 2016, @06:39PM

    by Fnord666 (652) on Thursday September 15 2016, @06:39PM (#402408) Homepage

    A small microsatellite named Banxing 2 [skyrocket.de] stowed aboard Thursday’s launch will fly near Tiangong 2 in orbit and collect images of the space lab.

    I don't expect the Chinese government will publish the information, but I wonder if anyone knows or will be trying to find the frequency and encoding for the image transmissions. It would be pretty interesting to capture them as transmitted before "post processing".

    • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Thursday September 15 2016, @08:53PM

      by Geotti (1146) on Thursday September 15 2016, @08:53PM (#402468) Journal

      Please submit a story if you find out, so we can enjoy them too!