Chinese Spaceflight of 3rd Quarter 2023, A Thread - Confusing Landscapes, Dazzling Power Projection, Interesting Times: This makes it 10 such Chinese triplets for the YG-35/36 group in 500 km 35 degrees inclination LEOs, plus another 10 of the YG-30 series in slightly higher 590 km orbits. That’s more launches used than even OneWeb did! We can all speculate what they are doing up there.

Given that we might have investigated all those public data to death of the Starship launch a week ago, it might be time to hear some "expert opinions".

And who's better for this than the ones who really wanna make their own full Starship!

https://twitter.com/cnsawatcher/status/1651451872966762497

(this is actually written by a few engineers at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), *the* premium Chinese rocket builder for decades, to be published in a Chinese Society of Astronautics publication: mp.weixin.qq.com/s/0_6N7KiLArQ8…)

Key points summary coming soon...

Hmm...30 km/h at 80 meters height was the final data received for #HAKUTO_R. That's better than Beresheet and Chandrayaan 2's lander, but... Yeah I'm actually not sure the data shown on the screen as "real telemetry" was actually not simulation. The presentation wasn't clear at that.

https://twitter.com/StephenClark1/status/1650903469996359694

SHOTS HAVE BEEN FIRED. I REPEAT, SHOTS HAVE BEEN FIRED.

In a seminar to Nanjing University, Sun Zezhou, program chief of Chinese Mars mission Tianwen-1, has reported on the Chinese Mars Sample Return mission.

TL;DR: Landing on Earth in July 2031, 2 years BEFORE NASA-ESA plans! For those who don’t know, the Chinese plan is for a simpler 2 S/C profile, an Earth return orbiter S/C and a lander/MAV S/C, w/ digging right over the landing site & no rover involvement. It reminds me of @NASAJPL studies of MSR missions back in the 1990s, but w/ a dedicated ERO.

No fairing separation views… #Globalstar SECO-1 at 533 km altitude, 26280 km/h.

K e r b a l S p a c e P r o g r a m

https://twitter.com/CNSpaceflight/status/1527479564577873921

Meanwhile back in Jiuquan NW China, the probably LM-2C (maybe w/ upper stage?) launch to polar orbit as mentioned above should occur within the next hour.

https://twitter.com/CNSpaceflight/status/1526604540367187969

“Our new Starship is now established, and has an appearance that promises revolution; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except Starlink and Chinese launches.” - (Not) Benjamin Franklin

‘Y know what? It’s the later’s time *again* - and there are 3 in next week! The most painful part is, of course, no-one but smirking insiders know of anything certain about *any* of them, starting with a SSO launch from Taiyuan on November 20 ~01:50 UTC! The multiple drop zones *seems *to align w/ previous reports of a GF-11-03 launching on LM-4B. Maybe.

After some reading (including a trip down my memory lane of a Grade 7 me reading Spirit/Opportunity mission updates, which kick-started me in following real-time news of space missions) - this is indeed a much longer silence than we usually see.

https://twitter.com/cosmos4u/status/1393905009658671104

For S/C that did operate on Mars surface, 1st imagery was released:

@MarsCuriosity/@NASAPersevere/@NASAInSight - ~real time
@MarsPhoenix - ~2 hours
Spirit/Opportunity - ~3-4 hours
Mars Pathfinder - ~8 hours (partly due to landing at night)
Vikings - within several hours

LOL I didn't expect our interesting neighbors across the Pearl River to be the first bringing the coordinates of the Chinese Mars Rover...

https://twitter.com/sklplanets/status/1393361045347966978?s=19

For the record landing time (I assume Earth receive time?) was 23:18 UTC May 14: m.weibo.cn/7340734455/463…

Zhurong becomes the 1st Mars rover to land sitting on the deck of a "conventional" lander, first foreseen for the cancelled Mars Surveyor '01 lander.

Morning from UTC+8.
Not a single piece of update (or rumor) from this side of Earth for #Tianwen1, so this suggestion that lander separation might have occurred (not directly observed) is as much as we get an update so far.
Landing should be in 1.5 hours.

https://twitter.com/df2mz/status/1393285651743772676?s=19

Update on #Tianwen1 from the Chinese side as of 22:54 UTC:

And so probably the quietest planetary surface operations outside of Earth's gravity influence ever since the end of Cold War begins.

MCC Beijing probably looks like this - something we 99.9% won't see:

https://twitter.com/PRCMarsRover/status/1393238080132247552

Also some notes on what to expect - while Chang'e 3 had a good coverage of its landing on TV, Chang'e 4's safe touchdown wasn't even confirmed until *1.5 hours* after fact. So if nothing was heard for minutes after the leaked time, it could mean *anything*.

It's interesting to see how @RocketLab's Neutron rocket fits in with the market in a regime that I call the "Soyuz-Antares Class" for the mid-2020s.

Here's my opinion: * Soyuz-2/6: Easily the biggest loser in the fight w/ S-2 a major player currently including mega-constellation building. W/ @Arianespace dumping Soyuz & now this it seems the venerable R-7 may finally go into history.

S-6? I'm not sure this @Rogozin trampoline will ever fly...

A recent Chinese book published by the CLEP program has confirmed that there was indeed a problem associated with Chang’e 4 between launch and landing (which might explain the aloof/tense coverage back then in Dec. 2018 - Jan. 2019).

(1/6) One of the two fuel tanks on the lander was found to be leaking propellant far faster than expected 7 hours after launch on Dec. 7. Not only fuel loss was concerning (it was once believed that it was lacking 10 kg of fuel reserves), there was also problems w/ shifted COG.

(2/6)

So regarding to my "bombshell"...it's perhaps a bit less dramatic than many presumed, yet it still troubles me a lot, to the point that I wondered whether I should stop posting on certain things here.

https://twitter.com/Cosmic_Penguin/status/1344485683436482563

You see, I realized in the last few months that, by translating information and news related to one of the fastest growing spaceflight powers of the world...I inadvertently became a spreader of PRC propaganda.

And with me exactly 180 degrees away from them, I feel scared.

So I've been having this question for quite some time: "Can any other global rocket players make their own (mini) Starship?"

So many people are thinking that Starship/SH will stomp every other commercial rockets out there & I don't see any discussions of how can others respond. The thing is while the structures of Starship/SH is more shipyard building like than any other rocket out there, it uses some of the most state-of-the-art engines ever. Not every main space power out there has the ability to develop their Raptors after all (e.g. the Chinese).

So after much ponderings and persistent rumors of at least 1 more Chinese satellite launch before 2020's out, evidences today confirms that, yes, there's one. A Long March 4 series (most probably 4C but can also be 4B) out of Jiuquan towards SSO, on December 27 ~15:40 UTC. (1/12) This turns out to be a classic example of how the sheer existence of such a Chinese launch/satellite have to be, or can be deduced by rumors, tell tales of official articles, tracking ships movements and air/marine space closure notices. (2/12) forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topi…

It seems that there hasn’t been any detailed specifications of the scientific instruments of the now-about-to-be-rolled-to-launch-pad of the Chinese Tianwen-1 Mars Orbiter and @PRCMarsRover missions in English from anywhere I have seen - at least till now! Thanks to @cathirame I finally get a detailed specifications list that I have crudely translated into English! Bear in mind that my UG physics were bad and the Chinese scientific terms used are a little bit different from my familar translations so the translation is crude. 😂