29
votes
Accepted
Cartoon-like characters on the side of the Tianwen-1 Mars lander?
The cartoon characters are the mascots for the 2022 Winter Olympic games & the Winter Para Olympic games.
The panda figure on the left is for the Olympic Games and the red figure of the right is ...
- 12.3k
13
votes
Accepted
CZ-4B Grid fins
TLDR the main purpose of the grid fins is to steer the spent 1st stage away from populated areas when it's falling to the grond.
CZ-4B targets SSO and is mostly launched from T-SLC (Taiyuan Satellite ...
- 1,559
5
votes
Accepted
What flag is flying over the landing site of the Shenzhou 12 crew astronauts returning from Tiangong? What does it say?
The characters in the flag appear to be "搜救 回收大队" which Google translate gives as: "Search and rescue recovery brigade"
Though I haven't found a direct link to an organization with ...
- 301
4
votes
Approximate size of the "hut" object observed from the Yutu-2 lunar rover?
The width of the "funny-looking rock" is no more than about $6.0$ metres.
The fact that the field of view in the image shown cannot be wider than $360°$ allows us to calculate an approximate ...
- 283
3
votes
Accepted
What is or are the official English names for the eventual space station being built by China, and of the first module that's in orbit now?
The Chinese space station is called the Tiangong ("Heavenly Palace") as seen in this article from the Chinese National Space Administration.
The core module that has already launched is ...
- 2,524
3
votes
Approximate size of the "hut" object observed from the Yutu-2 lunar rover?
The so call hut rock observed by Yutu 2 is apparently another yutu!
'The "mysterious hut" as tall as the Arc de Triomphe turned out to be very small when approached,' they said in the ...
- 12.3k
2
votes
Accepted
Is the Ceres-1 the first Chinese rocket that was given an official Romanized name?
Long March, Chinese Chang Zheng, family of Chinese launch vehicles.
says Britannica. They were intended for export, a plausible reason for its builders to take the initiative of translating its ...
- 11.2k
1
vote
Why is it so cold in the nighttime (-130 C at 25.1 degree North) at the location where the Chinese rover landed on Mars?
Unfortunately Insight's subsurface thermal probe is not in place so we don't have data from Mars, but what it would look like is at say 50 or 100 cm below the surface the temperature was constant, but ...
- 149k
1
vote
What are these details on (renderings of) the Zhurong rover's wheels?
It is the number of the wheel in morse code. The front right has ..-. (1) and the front left has .-..(2) multiple times on them.
Probably used to identify which wheel made which track on the surface.
...
- 4,575
1
vote
Why (the heck) did Tianwan-1 insert into a low inclination orbit then execute a plane change from 11.8 to 86.9 degrees?
A direct insertion into a polar orbit gives you only one option for an orbital plane: one that's initially pointed straight at the Sun. This is sub-optimal for an observation mission, since you're ...
- 13.9k
1
vote
Was Queqiao in a halo or Lissajous orbit? Why do sources disagree?
Was Queqiao in a halo or Lissajous orbit?
It is hard to say which, or even yes or no, because there are so many kinds of Lagrange point orbits possible that can be maintained with a little help from ...
1
vote
China. Its very own modular spacestation
A bit dated (2011) article from China Daily states that the launch of Tiangong-3 is planned around 2020-2022, stating that this is information from The China Manned Space Engineering Office. The ...
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