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China plans ambitious space mission to hunt and ‘capture’ asteroids by 2020
Ultimate aim is to land on orbiting space rocks and exploit their mineral wealth, top space scientists say
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 11 May, 2017, 9:01pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 11 May, 2017, 9:09pm
Stephen Chen
A senior government space scientist said China was considering mounting a mission to “capture” an asteroid and try to fire it into the moon’s orbit within a decade, state media reported.
The ultimate aim would be to mine the asteroid for metal and minerals, or use it as the base for a space station.
Ye Peijian, chief commander and designer of China’s lunar exploration programme, said at a meeting of space authorities in Beijing this week that the nation’s first batch of asteroid exploration spacecraft would probably be launched in about 2020, according to state media reports.
NASA says space mining can solve climate change, food security and other Earthly issues
Asteroids roam throughout our solar system, ranging in size from a metre to hundreds of kilometres across. Some cross close to Earth’s orbit, sometimes dangerously so.
Many near-Earth asteroids contain a high concentrations of precious metals, Ye told the Science and Technology Daily, a newspaper run by China’s Ministry of Science and Technology.
He estimated some of the asteroids might justify the enormous cost and risk of space exploration as their economic value could amount to trillions of US dollars.
Nasa announced a plan earlier this year to send two spacecraft to asteroids in 2021 and 2023.
The later mission will explore the asteroid 16 Psyche, which is 210km wide and probably a remnant from the core of an ancient planet no longer in existence.
The Chinese programme, however, is much more ambitious.
The plan is to capture an asteroid by landing and anchor a spacecraft on its surface, fire up multiple rocket boosters and project it into the orbit of the moon.
An asteroid like a 10-storey building just missed Earth by only half the distance to the Moon. We barely saw it coming
The excavation of mineral ores and its transportation to Earth would be carried out by robotic machinery, Ye was quoted as saying.
Ye estimated it could take a further four decades before China had the technology and infrastructure in place to mine the asteroid.
No details were given of which asteroid Chinese space scientists may be targeting.
China is also interested in using an asteroid as the base for a permanent space station, the report said. Ye was quoted by the newspaper as saying that the Chinese government was mulling this separate proposal to build a self-sustainable base on an asteroid.
The natural spin of an asteroid could generate a certain amount of centrifugal force that could be transformed into gravity, which was good for the mobility and general health of astronauts, he said.
A team of space scientists from the California Institute of Technology came up with a similar proposal in 2013 and submitted it to the White House under the former Obama administration.
China re-activated an air-tight research facility in Beijing on Wednesday and began a new experiment with artificial ecological system to pave the way for the design and construction of human settlement on the moon.
Four young men and women volunteers entered Lunar Palace 1 – a self-contained laboratory in Beihang University with a bio-regenerative life support system built four years ago – to join a year-long mission to evaluate the system’s performance after new upgrades, in particular its reliability and flexibility to cope with various accidents.
Chinese space technology still lags decades behind the US, but the Chinese government has poured enormous resources into the development of its space programme, including developing an orbiting space station. Analysts say the clear aim is to challenge US supremacy in space.
The first landing of a probe on an asteroid was conducted in 2001 by the US spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker.
Chinese scientists study viability of manned radar station on the moon
The European spacecraft Rosetta put a fully-functioning landing probe on an asteroid in 2014, which sent back data for two days until its power supply ran out.
The Chinese lunar probe Chang’e-2 conducted a fly-by in 2012 over 4179 Toutatis, the largest asteroid known to pose a collision threat with Earth.
Huang Jiangchuan, the chief scientist at China’s deep space exploration programme, said at the same meeting attended by Ye on Monday that the nation’s asteroid mission would aim high for “landmark achievements”, state media reported.
But some space researchers have cautioned that the mission faced huge challenges, including developing technology to firmly anchor the probe to the surface of the asteroid.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/poli...lans-ambitious-space-mission-hunt-and-capture
And THANK YOU for letting us know the little fact in this dedicated threadChina is building it's space station. Good luck to them!
They said a lot about what RUS & CHN may have for the ASAT but forget to mention own X-37BChina, Russia Advancing Anti-Satellite Technology, US Intelligence Chief Says
By Leonard David, Space.com's Space Insider Columnist | May 18, 2017 07:00am ET
View attachment 399047
The United States' top intelligence official spotlighted the threat of space warfare in a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last week.
In his written testimony in the May 11 hearing, Dan Coats, director of national intelligence, reviewed the worldwide threat assessment of the U.S. intelligence community, noting an appraisal that "Russia and China perceive a need to offset any U.S. military advantage derived from military, civil, or commercial space systems and are increasingly considering attacks against satellite systems as part of their future warfare doctrine."
Coats reported that both Russia and China "will continue to pursue a full range of antisatellite (ASAT) weapons as a means to reduce U.S. military effectiveness." [The Most Dangerous Space Weapons Ever]
Some new Russian and Chinese ASAT weapons, including destructive systems, "will probably complete development in the next several years," Coats added. "Russian military strategists likely view counterspace weapons as an integral part of broader aerospace defense rearmament and are very likely pursuing a diverse suite of capabilities to affect satellites in all orbital regimes."
China and Russia are advancing directed-energy (laser) weapons technologies for the purpose of fielding ASAT systems "that could blind or damage sensitive space-based optical sensors," Coats said. "Russia is developing an airborne laser weapon for use against U.S. satellites. Russia and China continue to conduct sophisticated on-orbit satellite activities, such as rendezvous and proximity operations, at least some of which are likely intended to test dual-use technologies with inherent counterspace functionality."
Coats also testified that robotics technology designed for satellite servicing and space-junk removal might be used to damage satellites.
"Such missions will pose a particular challenge in the future, complicating the U.S. ability to characterize the space environment, decipher intent of space activity, and provide advance threat warning," Coats wrote.
Additionally, the global threat of electronic warfare attacks against space systems will expand in the coming years in both the number and types of weapons, Coats noted.
"Development will very likely focus on jamming capabilities against dedicated military satellite communications (SATCOM), Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging satellites, and enhanced capabilities against Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), such as the US Global Positioning System (GPS)," Coats said.
You can read Coats' testimony here: http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Testimonies/SSCI Unclassified SFR - Final.pdf
Leonard David is author of "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet," published by National Geographic. The book is a companion to the National Geographic Channel series "Mars." A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. This version of this story was posted on Space.com.
http://www.space.com/36891-space-war-anti-satellite-weapon-development.html
Is this US space defense thread sirBoeing Wins $1B MDA Contract For Four Space Object Kill Vehicles
Defense World.net 08:35 AM, May 23, 2017
Boeing Wins $1B MDA Contract For Four Space Object Kill Vehicles
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has awarded Boeing with a $1.08 billion contract to provide development support for the Redesigned Kill Vehicle program.
This modification contract brings to the total award to more than $5 billion for work on the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, the US Department of defense announced in a press release Monday.
The contract covers payload development, payload ground testing, integration with the Ground-based Interceptor (GBI) and GMD Ground system, flight testing and four initial production RKVs for initial fielding, the release states.
Boeing will collaborate with Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to develop the RKV system and perform work in Alabama, Arizona, California and other government designated locations through June 30, 2022.
Kill vehicles destroy long-range ballistic missiles in space. Launched atop missiles, kill vehicles use sensors, lenses and rocket thrusters to pick out warheads and steer into their paths. The RKV is a component of the GMD system interceptors designed to destroy targets in high-speed collisions after separating from the booster rocket.
Performance assessments of new solid-fuel ramjet with variable airflow completed:
http://kpzg.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0601/c404389-29310924.html
The engine is now primed for next generation aerospace model engineering/project applications.