As Chinese Wheels Touch Martian Soil And Indian Astronauts Walk Towards The Launch Pad, Can We Hope For Another Space Race?

July 12, 2021 by Jenny List 34 Comments

If you were born in the 1960s or early 1970s, the chances are that somewhere in your childhood ambitions lay a desire to be an astronaut or cosmonaut. Once Yuri Gagarin had circled the Earth and Neil Armstrong had walked upon the Moon, millions of kids imagined that they too would one day climb into a space capsule and join that elite band of intrepid explorers. Anything seems possible when you are a five-year-old, but of course the reality remains that only the very fewest of us ever made it to space.

Did You Once Dream Of The Stars?

The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in Finland in 1961. Arto Jousi, Public domain.

The picture may be a little different for the youth of a few decades later though, did kids in the ’90s dream of the stars? Probably not. So what changed as Shuttle and Mir crews were passing overhead?

The answer is that the Space Race between the USA and Soviet Union which had dominated extra-terrestrial exploration from the 1950s to the ’70s had by then cooled down, and impressive though the building of the International Space Station was, it lacked the ability to electrify the public in the way that Sputnik, Vostok, or Apollo had. It was immensely cool to people like us, but the general public were distracted by other things and their political leaders were no longer ready to approve money-no-object budgets. We’d done space, and aside from the occasional bright spot in the form of space telescopes or rovers trundling across Mars, that was it. The hit TV comedy series The Big Bang Theory even had a storyline that found comedy in one of its characters serving on a mission to the ISS and being completely ignored on his return.

A few years ago a Chinese friend at my then-hackerspace was genuinely surprised that I knew the name of Yang Liwei, the Shenzhou 5 astronaut and the first person launched by his country into space. He’s a national hero in China but not so much on the rainy edge of Europe, where the Chinese space programme for all its progress at the time about a decade after Yang’s mission had yet to make a splash beyond a few space watchers and enthusiasts in hackerspaces. But this might be beginning to change.

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Look Out Below! China’s Heavy-Lift Rocket Due For Uncontrolled Reentry Within Days

April 30, 2021 by Tom Nardi 57 Comments

On April 28th, China successfully put the core module of their Tianhe space station into orbit with the latest version of the Long March 5B heavy-lift booster. This rocket, designed for launching large objects into low Earth orbit, is unique in that the 33.16 m (108.8 ft) first stage carries the payload all the way to orbit rather than separating at a lower altitude. Unfortunately, despite an international effort to limit unnecessary space debris, the first stage of the Long March 5B booster is now tumbling through space and is expected to make an uncontrolled reentry sometime in the next few days.

The massive booster has been given the COSPAR ID 2021-035-B, and ground tracking stations are currently watching it closely to try and determine when and where it will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere. As of this writing it’s in a relatively low orbit of 169 x 363 km, which should decay rapidly given the object’s large surface area. Due to the variables involved it’s impossible to pinpoint where the booster will reenter this far out, but the concern is that should it happen over a populated area, debris from the 21 metric ton (46,000 pound) booster could hit the ground.

This is the second launch for the Long March 5B, the first taking place on May 5th of 2020. That booster was also left in a low orbit, and made an uncontrolled reentry six days later. During a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s Regulatory and Policy Committee, Administrator Jim Bridenstine claimed that had the rocket reentered just 30 minutes prior, debris could have come down over the continental United States. Objects which were suspected of being remnants of the Long March 5B were discovered in Africa, though no injuries were reported.

China’s first space station, Tiangong-1, made an uncontrolled reentry of its own back in 2018. It’s believed that most of the 8,500 kg (18,700 lb) burned up as it streaked through the atmosphere, and anything that was left fell harmlessly into the South Pacific Ocean. While small satellites are increasingly designed to safely disintegrate upon reentry, large objects such as these pose a more complex problem as we expand our presence in low Earth orbit.

China’s Moon Mission Was About More Than Rocks

December 14, 2020 by Tom Nardi 67 Comments

If everything goes according to plan, China will soon become the third country behind the United States and the Soviet Union to successfully return a sample of lunar material. Their Chang’e 5 mission, which was designed to collect 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of soil and rock from the Moon’s surface, has so far gone off without a hitch. Assuming the returning spacecraft successfully renters the Earth’s atmosphere and lands safely on December 16th, China will officially be inducted into a very exclusive club of Moon explorers.

Of course, spaceflight is exceedingly difficult and atmospheric reentry is particularly challenging. Anything could happen in the next few days, so it would be premature to celebrate the Chang’e 5 mission as a complete success. But even if ground controllers lose contact with the vehicle on its return to Earth, or it burns up in the atmosphere, China will come away from this mission with a wealth of valuable experience that will guide its lunar program for years to come.

In fact, one could argue that was always the real goal of the mission. While there’s plenty of scientific knowledge and not an inconsequential amount of national pride to be gained from bringing a few pounds of Moon rocks back to Earth, it’s no secret that China has greater aspirations when it comes to our nearest celestial neighbor. Starting with the launch of the Chang’e 1 in 2007, the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program has progressed through several operational phases, each more technically challenging than the last. Chang’e 5 represents the third phase of the plan, with only the establishment of robotic research station to go before the country says they’ll proceed with a crewed landing in the 2030s.

Which helps explain why, even for a sample return from the Moon, Chang’e 5 is such an extremely complex mission. A close look at the hardware and techniques involved shows a mission profile considerably more difficult than was strictly necessary. The logical conclusion is that China intentionally took the long way around so they could use it as a dry run for the more challenging missions that still lay ahead.

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Norway Leads The Charge To Phase Out Internal Combustion; China And The UK To Follow

December 7, 2020 by Lewin Day 194 Comments

Climate change promises to cause untold damage across the world if greenhouse gas emissions continue at current levels for much longer. Despite the wealth of evidence indicating impending doom, governments have done what humans do best, and procrastinated on solving the issue.

However, legislatures around the world are beginning to snap into action. With transportation being a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions — 16% of the global total in 2016 — measures are being taken to reduce this figure. With electric cars now a viable reality, many governments are planning to ban the sale of internal combustion vehicles in the coming decades.

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Building Walks With Robot Legs

November 4, 2020 by Chris Lott 11 Comments

The Shanghai Evolution Shift company has just pulled off one of the most impressive robotic projects we’ve ever seen – making a building walk using 198 robotic legs. We’ve all seen structural relocation documentaries where large buildings are moved to new locations. This involves jacking up the building and installing a supporting platform on wheels, then carefully towing the building to its new site.

But the T shape of the five story, 7600 ton Lagena elementary school was problematic, and the route to the new site involved taking a curved path and rotating the building. This ruled out the more traditional methods of relocation. Robot legs came to the rescue. It took 18 days for the building to walk 62 meters and rotate 21 degrees to its new home. This project is part of a trend to preserve historic architecture rather than bulldoze everything to make space for modern buildings.

After watching the video below, we think you’ll agree that this is a unique application of robotics and an amazing engineering feat. Disclaimer – don’t try this at home. Thanks to [Chuckz] for sending us this tip.

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What Is The Tianwen-1 Probe Saying?

July 28, 2020 by Jenny List 14 Comments

A few days ago, the Chinese National Space Administration launched their Tianwen-1 mission to Mars from their launch site in the province of Hainan. It should arrive at the Red Planet in April 2021, when it will face the daunting task of launching a surface probe from its orbiting component, which will release a rover once it has reached the surface. Like all such missions it’s in constant contact with its controllers on the ground, and as with any radio transmissions floating through the aether its telemetry has been received by the radio hacker community and analaysed by [r00t].

Straight away there’s something interesting in the modulation scheme, instead of a carrier with modulation applied to it there is a main unmodulated centre carrier, and the data appears instead on a series of subcarriers. Is this a feature of its being a space probe, the unmodulated carrier making it easier to find and track in deep space?

They quickly find the telemetry carrier, and decode its frames. It carries a series of data sets, including positional and instrumentation data. From the positional data they can tell when the craft has made any course changes, and from the sensor data such as the solar sensor its movement can be deduced and graphed. It makes for a fascinating insight into the mission, and we’re grateful for the analysis.

Mars is a notoriously difficult target for space probes, somewhere that multiple missions have for various reasons failed to reach. We hope the Tianwen-1 mission is ultimately successful and that in time the Chinese space people will in due course be showing us some of the fruits of their labours. They’re not alone in launching this month, so we’ve got a plethora of Mars-related stories to look forward to next year.

Header image: Tianwen-1 rover mockup. Pablo de León‎ / CC BY-SA 3.0

EU Duty Changes, A Whole VAT Of Trouble For Hackers?

March 10, 2020 by Jenny List 105 Comments

It could be said that there are a number of factors behind the explosion of creativity in our community of hardware hackers over the last couple of decades, but one in particular that is beyond doubt is the ease with which it has been possible to import small orders from China. See something on AliExpress and it can be yours for a few quid, somewhere in a warehouse on the other side of the world it’s put into a grey shipping bag, and three weeks later it’s on your doorstep. This bounty has in no small part been aided by a favourable postage and taxation environment in which both low postage costs and a lack of customs duties on packages under a certain value conspire to render getting the product in front of you a fraction of the cost of buying the thing in the first place. Continue reading “EU Duty Changes, A Whole VAT Of Trouble For Hackers?” →