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Chinese Spacecraft Enters Orbit Around the Moon
mpicpp sends this report from Scientific American:
A Chinese spacecraft service module has entered orbit around the moon, months after being used in the country's landmark test flight that sent a prototype sample-return capsule on a flight around the moon and returned it to Earth. The service module from China's circumlunar test flight arrived in orbit around the moon this week, according to Chinese state media reports. The spacecraft is currently flying in an eight-hour orbit that carries it within 125 miles (200 kilometers) of the lunar surface at its closest point, and out to a range of 3,293 miles (5,300 km) at its highest point. Earlier reports noted that a camera system is onboard the service module, designed to assist in identifying future landing spots for the Chang'e 5 mission that will return lunar samples back to Earth in the 2017 time frame.
Reader schwit1 adds a detailed report on Russia's next-gen space station module, writing, "The Russians have always understood that a space station is nothing more than a prototype of an interplanetary spaceship. They are therefore simply carrying through with the same engineering research they did on their earlier Salyut and Mir stations, developing a vessel that can keep humans alive on long trips to other planets."
Glad to see someone is returning to the Moon, no matter which nation. We need more space exploration in general.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is quite neat! Where's the American contrib..... wait. "Cruz" missile strike. Oh the casualties =[
IT Professional.
" Earlier reports noted that a camera system is onboard the service module" A camera SYSTEM? omg omg omg
Didn't the Russians send a crew around the Moon, but NASA managed to land first?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Humor lost on you peasants, I see
To add to this: Mocking the only nation currently capable of bringing humans to the iss for their incompetence seems odd..
No Russian ever reached escape welocity.
...Congress appointed Ted Cruz to oversee NASA. Yay.
I hope it's not more SyFy, it would be great to see humans progress beyond LEO.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Our systems, especially propulsion, are just too primitive to be sending any humans to any of the planets. And most of that technology will have to be built on the moon, outside any atmosphere and in a much smaller gravity well. Also, considering our success rate in such things, we have just as good a chance of terraforming the moon as we do Mars. It will all be under glass anyway. Without a working core Mars can never generate and hold a breathable atmosphere. And unless the damn spaceships are as comfortable as your house, traveling in these tin cans are guaranteed to be a recreation of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.
No, the Russian's were hoping to do a manned flyby as part of the Zond program, but the Proton rocket had a number of teething problems and it took awhile to become reliable enough to even consider putting people on (ultimately it never flew manned). There were also a number of problems with the Soyuz 7K-L1 spacecraft. US intelligence thought the Soviet's were closer to flying a crewed lunar flyby mission as Zond 5 was largely a successful test. However Zond 6 depressurized and crashed on re-entry (killing the animals aboard) which ended any immediate plans of a crewed launch. Apollo 8 was originally to be a "D" mission, testing the Lunar Module in Low Earth Orbit with Apollo 9 an "E" mission testing it in Medium Earth Orbit. Due to delays with the Lunar Module, they decided to swap the missions and instead send Apollo 8 into lunar orbit (with no Lunar Module). Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders became the first humans to leave low Earth orbit Dec 21st, 1968. They successfully orbited the moon 10 times on Christmas day and returned Dec 27th After that the Soviet's pretty much gave up on the flyby in favor of a manned lunar landing, but they could never get the N-1 rocket to work
It didn't help that Sergei Korolev died right before the Apollo moon landings. It was even apparently due to a poorly trained surgeon for what should have been a routine medical procedure that caused his death. Had Korolev been around to provide strong leadership to the Soviet Moon program, I think there might have been an outside chance for a Soviet crewed lunar landing to have happened by about 1970 with the N-1 rocket becoming successful.
The funny thing is that the N-1 engines that should have gone to the Moon ended up being used by Orbital Science for sending supplies to the International Space Station. Then again, when one of those engines exploded shortly after launch, it destroyed one of the cargo modules and a couple of satellites... so the disaster of the N-1 seems to keep repeating itself.
Oh you do, do you?
You could be right.
It's ok, someone didn't like my comment either.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The Russians landed one of the only working probes on the surface of Venus.
have fun paying for all that with your Putin Pictures -- uh, I mean "rubles".
Does any Russian currency feature Putin on it? Not to my knowledge.
This space intentionally left blank
None one of the only working probes, _the_ only working landers (plural) on Venus. Everything else has been an orbiter or a flyby.
if commies aren't welcome then we aren't welcome because we have commies in our government.
No human ever reached escape velocity. No human's ever been outside Earth's sphere of influence.
Now moon will also get polluted and populated.
Seeing that gravity's range is infinite, your statement is content-free. I suspect you don't know what "escape velocity" is either.
Yeah, except for that whole Sputnik and Gagarin thing, what have the Russians ever done? You know, besides making all the big tough Americans soil their collective britches in '57?
Face it, sending people into space is useless. There's nothing out there for us, and space "exploration" consists of analyzing photons, something we can do right here from our computer chairs.
The Russians also sent Luna 16, an unmanned Moon sample return mission.
What have you done?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Congrats China for being successful
To add to this: Mocking the only nation currently capable of bringing humans to the iss for their incompetence seems odd..
They're the only currently physically capable, but not the only technologically capable. We chose to let them have that spot, it didn't happen because we couldn't prevent it. And it's a situation which will soon be remedied. And we're mocking them for their incompetence because they can't do what we have done, which is much harder.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
He means escape velocity of the Earth, Sheldon.
The most high-quality stream of photons we have ever received from space is PRODUCED IN SPACE. And keeping it going has required periodic servicing by human crews.
If I was running the Chinese space program, I'd put together a mission to the Sea of Tranquility, and bring bak some Apollo 11 souvenirs. It would be the most intense possible statement that there are now two nations on the Earth that have had the technology and will to travel to the Moon, and the USA no longer has a monopoly on it.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Assuming that the american GOP can be stopped, america will have humans at a luner base by 2022 if not 2020. Bigelow, with NASA help, are working hard to put us there. What is needed is spacex's MCT, which is designed to put 100 tonnes on mars in one shot, for less than $.5B. Musk will be happy to do lunar trips as well, but the GOP keep trying to gut Bigelow and spacex.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The west will be on the moon by 2022 or sooner.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Since snowden, US is quite restrained on spying. Instead, we are going to see a major increase in terrorist attacks.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Nope
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yeah, america keeps landing larger crafts on mars which is far more difficult than earth, venus, or the moon. As such when ppl claim that we have lost it, they obviously do not read.
But I differ with you about how robots are doing fine without us. They are very limited. In addition, the GOP continues to force NASA to be a jobs program, which means that economically, we could not go to the moon or mars.
musk and Bigelow are changing the economics of it. Both are making it so that not only will america be on a lunar base within 6 years, but we will be at a Martion base within 15 years.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Even now, dragon 1 and dragon 2 are very capable of launching humans into space and bringing them back. What is missing is that NASA and faa would deny launch because full testing has not been completed.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"...within 125 miles (200 kilometers) of the lunar surface at its closest point, and out to a range of 3,293 miles (5,300 km) at its highest point..."
Thanks to Kerbal Space Program, I know what those are called! The first one is the periapsis and the second one is the apoapsis. :D (Yes, I know, common knowledge, but it's cool that a game taught me a thing or two about spaceflight...)
Too bad real life has the Ferram Aerospace mod enabled; this craft very likely would be unable to reenter the atmosphere and land (or splash down) without breaking up, because it's not designed to withstand the heat and drag forces.
Ah, but robots can't stand on the veranda of the space station Freedom and piss on every single one of you cowering groundhogs at the same time.
a man's reach should exceed his grasp -- Robert Browning
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
In my view the problems facing the Soviet space program at the time were just too systemic for even Korolev to have resolved. Unlike the US which had NASA and thus a single coordinated moon program, the Soviets essentially had 3. Korolev, Yangel and Chelomei were constantly fighting each other for political influence and funding. Even then, the funding never matched the grandiose political statements (similar to NASA today). While Sputnik, Vostok and Voshod could be accomplished on a shoestring budget, leveraging the R-7 program, the Soyuz, N1 and LK (the Soviet Lunar Lander) programs required substantial investment that never really emerged. Korolev was never able to build a test stand for the N-1 due to lack of funding, meaning they had to "debug" it in flight, an insane approach for something as large, complex (and expensive) as the N-1. In 1966, Korolev spent the entire annual N-1 budget by March and wasn't able to do anything more until the next year. The under investment in Soyuz resulted in Komarov's death on a spacecraft no where near ready to carry a crew. The first unmanned flight of the LK didn't even take place until the end of 1970. It's interesting to note that the slashing of NASA's budget began in 1967, shortly after the CIA released its intelligence estimate on the state of the Soviet Space Program. While they indicated a manned flyby by 1968 was likely, a manned landing wasn't likely until 1972 if at all.
Going to mars after going to the moon is much easier than going to the moon for first time.
The problem is that going to mars was too expensive because companies became too expensive. Now, spacex and Bigelow are making it cheap to go to both.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
OTOH , Apollo was only 200 mph shy of earth escape speed.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Not sure that I agree with you about n1. Its issues was that they had lousy QA ( still do, which is why they build designs that can handle that ).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Landing on Venus is trivial. Getting the lander to survive the heat and pressure is not a big deal.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Mod op up please.
note that without human fixes, we would have discarded Hubble. The fact is, that repairing a sat via robot is difficult.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'm not sure a lot of the souvenirs left behind would be desirable.
Agree on the QA issues, but that reflects on lack of funding and resources. Even then, only 1 of the 4 N-1 launches failed due to QA (The second flight when an engine ingested a loose bolt). The rest were all design issues (Flight 1: high frequency oscillations, Flight 3: insufficient control authority, Flight: 4 pogo). Bear in mind that these were all issues with the first stage, the upper stages were NEVER tested (engines yes, but not stages). Without test stands to validate and debug the design before first flight there was no guarantee that assuming they had finally resolved the first stage issues, that there wouldn't have been a slew of other problems with the 3 upper stages. .
I'm guessing you have no clue what "outside Earth's sphere of influence" is either.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Space-X could carry humans to the ISS at any time. Currently, they haven't gone through the very large amount of testing to be certified for it, and the Russians are still willing to do the carrying.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Note that it would cost less to simply send a new one up instead of the expensive kludge of the Shuttle+humans.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Think it is easier? Look at how long we have taken for JWST. Basically, building massively new large sats remains expensive.
OTOH, it is MUCH cheaper to fix the hubble. Even with the shuttle, it was still cheaper. Now, with the coming Dragon along with Inflatable space stations.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Not a fan of the Chineese govt., but well done China!