Oppressive China's first private rocket firm aims for market

Hu Zhenyu was born in Jiangxi, Jiujiang in 1993. After graduating from South China University of Technology, Hu and Yan Cheng Yi (M) from Tsinghua University and Wu Xiaofei (R), who has six years of mechanical background, together set up the first private rocket company in China.

Hu Zhenyu, 21, founder of Link Space, China's first private rocket firm, does not want people to call him a "rocket scientist" but a rocket entrepreneur.

Rocket launches have traditionally been been a state monopoly in China, but the young graduate from South China University of Technology plans bust the oligopoly with his first commercial launch in 2017.

On July 29 last year, Hu's team launched a rocket with a payload of 50 kg in northwest China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

In January of this year, the company was registered in Shenzhen by Hu and two other men in their 20s: Yan Chengyi, a PhD candidate at Tsinghua University and Wu Xiaofei, a machinery manufacturing specialist.

On Aug. 5, they had a successful trial of a liquid-propellant rocket engine at a courtyard in a suburb of Gaoyou City in east China's Jiangsu Province, Wu's hometown.

The space industry is capital-intensive, so Hu is offering 16 percent of the company for 16 million yuan (2.6 million U.S. dollars) to venture capitalists, valuing the enterprise at a highly speculative 100 million yuan. Hu claims he has already been offered 6.7 million yuan from several investors.

The focus of Link Space is a rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during sub-orbital flight.

The rocket will carry instruments to an altitude of up to 200 kilometers. It is very different from the kind of launch vehicle that carries heavy satellites into space.

The average price for launching such a commercial rocket is about 3 million yuan but Link Space intends to cut that price by a third.

"The domestic rocket market is worth tens of millions of yuan but will grow to hundreds of millions soon if we can provide more value," Hu said.

Hu is very familiar with SpaceX, California's commercial space venture founded by Elon Musk.

"I admire Elon Musk but Link Space will never copy SpaceX or anybody else," he said.

SpaceX's Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets had diameters of 1.7 meters and 3.5 meters respectively.

"If our research goes smoothly, we plan to produce rockets with a diameter of 7 meters by 2020," said Hu.

But space missions are a very costly business.

"Rockets need decades of technological accumulation and billions of yuan," said Luo Shu, chairman of KCSA, a non-governmental space enthusiast organization. He feels that time is not ripe for a Chinese SpaceX.

"The achievements of U.S. private rocket firms are based on the long history of its space industry, not a sudden start-up fairytale" Shu said.

"China has no private space testing ground, so launch trials will be problematic," he added. Hu's team experiments in the Tsinghua University lab where Yan Chengyi works or the courtyard in Gaoyou City.

A 2011 white paper on China's space industry encouraged scientific and academic institutions as well as social groups to actively participate in the industry.

"Though we cannot catch up with the major state-owned players on technology in the short term, our presence will be a positive stimulus to the industry," Hu said.

Oppressive China to launch new satellite Miranda for Venezuela

The VRSS-1 satellite is Venezuela's first remote sensing satellite and the second Venezuelan satellite after VENESAT-1.

VRSS-1 is mainly used for the country's land resource inspections, environmental protection, disaster detection and management, crop yield estimation and city planning.

Ironically, VRSS-1 Miranda has been named after Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda.

The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) has signed an agreement with Venezuela for in-orbit delivery of a second remote sensing satellite for the country, the company said on Tuesday.

CASC subsidiary Great Wall Industry Corporation will be the major contractor of the project, the corporation said, but the corporation did not give a specific timeframe for the project.

Oppressive Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is on a four-nation Latin America tour, told his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro Sunday in Caracas that China is ready to expand satellite technology transfer to Venezuela.

China sent a remote sensing satellite, the "VRSS-1," into space from northwest China's Gobi desert for Venezuela in 2012.

VRSS-1 is Venezuela's first remote sensing satellite and is mainly used for the country's land resource inspections, environmental protection, disaster detection and management, crop yield estimation and city planning.

Russia to abandon ISS and develop a new Space Station with China

Russia is developing a national program of manned space explorations which will replace the International Space Station (ISS) program after 2020, the Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos, said Thursday.

"The development of the national strategy of manned spaceflight is underway now."

"Along with the Russian Academy of Sciences and the industrial sector we are preparing a certain concept beyond the ISS," Roscosmos Deputy Chief Sergei Savelyev told reporters at the 18th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

China and the European Space Agency (ESA), he added, were seen as the potential partners in the new strategy, but the key role will belong to Russia.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who is in charge of space and defense sectors, said earlier in the week that Moscow had no plans to extend the operation of the ISS beyond 2020, though the United States had proposed to extend ISS cooperation after that year.

On Tuesday, Rogozin also threatened that from June 1 Moscow would shut down 11 U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) base stations on Russian territory in response to Washington's anti-Russia sanctions and its refusal to plant Russian Glonass ground base stations on U.S. territory.

Meanwhile, Roscosmos plans to resume talks over the placement of Glonass stations in the United States over the next few weeks, Savelyev said.

"I think it will happen in the very near future, over the next two or three weeks. It would still give us a chance to walk away from the unpleasant situation over sanctions and continue cooperation," the Interfax news agency quoted the official as saying.

Oppressive China's domestic GPS navigation system guides Pakistan

Oppressive China's domestically made Beidou (GPS) navigation system has set up a network in Pakistan, the first in a foreign country, the company said Thursday.

Beidou was co-developed by oppressive China's Great Wall Industry Corporation and the Beijing UniStrong Science& Technology Co., Ltd.

The first stage of Pakistan's geographic positioning network has been finished, Shen Jun, chief scientist of UniStrong, said at the annual China Satellite Navigation Conference in Nanjing.

The network includes five base stations and one processing center, covering Karachi.

It can provide positioning with a precision of 2 centimeters, while the precision can reach 5 millimeters after post processing, and can help in urban planning, surveying and mapping, environmental supervision, disaster relief, traffic monitoring and other fields.

Shen Jun said the second stage of the network will cover the whole of Pakistan and be the first national high precision Beidou navigation network abroad.

Oppressive China says Express-AM4P satellite space debris recovered

Photo taken on May 19, 2014 shows government technicians preparing to remove space debris that crashed to the ground in Qiqihar, China's Heilongjiang province 

Objects that crashed to the ground in China have been identified as space debris, state media reported, after a Russian rocket carrying a communications satellite fell back to Earth minutes after lift-off.

Qiqihar city in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, which borders Russia's far east, reported that several objects appeared to have fallen from the sky on Friday, the Xinhua news agency said.

After analysis, experts have concluded they were "parts from a carrier rocket or a satellite", Xinhua said Sunday, citing the China National Space Administration.

Authorities were communicating on the issue "with relevant parties", it added.

The report came after Russia's space officials said the Proton rocket's control engine failed Friday just over nine minutes following blastoff from the Baikonur space centre Moscow leases in Kazakhstan—the latest blow to the country's once-proud space industry.

State television showed the carrier and its Express-AM4P satellite burning up in the upper layers of the atmosphere.

The space debris that crashed to the ground in Qiqihar, China's Heilongjiang province, pictured on May 19, 2014

The 150-million-euro ($205-million) satellite, built by EADS Airbus Group's Astrium corporation, was meant to provide Internet access to far-flung Russian regions with poor access to communication.

Germany's aeronautics and space research centre (DLR): China espionage attack

The logo of the Germany's aeronautics and space research centre (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen, southern Germany 

Germany's aeronautics and space research centre (DLR) has for months been the target of a suspected cyber attack by a foreign intelligence service, a German news weekly reported Sunday.

Der Spiegel said that several computers used by scientists and systems administrators at the Cologne-based DLR centre had been infiltrated by spy programmes.

"The government classes the attack as extremely serious because it, among other things, is aimed at armament and rocket technolgies," Spiegel said.

In some computers IT experts found traces of spy programmes that were set up to destroy themselves on discovery, while others only activated themselves after months of lying in wait.

Spiegel said the attacks were "coordinated and systematic" and all the centre's operation systems were affected.

IT forensic experts probing who could be behind the assault have turned up clues that seem to point to China, but Spiegel quoted an unidentifed "insider" as saying they could also simply be "camouflage".

Government sources said the case was being investigated but declined to confirm any details.

The German aeronautics and space research centre is active in the fields of aeronautics, space, energy, transport and security and is involved in international cooperative ventures, according to its website.

Oppressive China deploys spy satellites in search for Malaysia plane

Beijing is deploying as many as 10 of their spy satellites in hopes of tracking down Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, state media reported Tuesday, as the search for the vanished aircraft entered its fourth day.

The high-resolution satellites, which are controlled from the Xian Satellite Control Centre in northern China, will be used for navigation, weather monitoring, communications and other aspects of the search-and-rescue effort.

Nearly two-thirds of the 239 people aboard flight MH370 were from China, and if the loss of the aircraft is confirmed, it would be China's second-worst ever air disaster.

Crews from nine countries have joined the international search effort, including China, Malaysia, the United States, Singapore, Vietnam, New Zealand, Indonesia, Australia and Thailand.

Oppressive China Unveils Smog-Busting Drone in Fight Against Pollution

A tourist boat, decorated with green lights, travels on the Pearl River amid heavy haze in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, China

Credit: Reuters 

China is preparing to test a smog-busting drone in an effort to help clean up air pollution, which has reached crisis levels in most big cities across the country.

Pollution experts will test a parafoil plane made by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China.

The unmanned vehicle has a gliding parachute which contains chemicals that effectively mop up particulates and other pollutants in the air.

The drone has flexible wings, making it easier to control. It can also carry three times the amount of chemical cargo than similar-sized aircraft, the company's chief executive, Ma Yongsheng, said.

A parafoil drone designed by the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China conducts "fog-clearing" operations in Ningbo. 

The firm says testing of a type of smog-fighting drone will begin soon. 

Photo: Nandu.com

According to the South China Morning Post, Ma said the parachute can carry up to 700kg of smog clearing-chemicals.

Over recent years, Chinese authorities have used planes to spray chemicals into the air, causing pollutants in smog to fall to the ground.

Ma also noted the drone can be used for emergency rescue, disaster relief and surveillance. There is also potential for its use in agriculture as it can spread seeds over wide areas.

Premier Li Keqiang told the National People's Congress rubberstamp parliament in Beijing that he had authorised a "war on pollution".

Five facts about China's smog

• 600 million people in China have been affected by the smog blanketing large parts of the country.
• The number of people admitted to hospital in Beijing for smog-related illnesses rose by 20% in 2013. Cases of breathing-related problems rose by 50%.
• Many foreign workers have left China because of health fears caused by the smog. One company reportedly pays expats around £15,000 a year extra to work in China as part of a hardship allowance.
• The Chinese have spent £85m on anti-smog products, such as masks and air purifiers.
• It's not all bad news. The Chinese news agency claims smog "unifies the Chinese people". It says smog makes them more conscious of their health and "more willing to show love to each other".

Climate Chnage: China Asian ozone pollution covers Pacific and US West Coast

China Asian pollution drifts east toward North America in 2010. 

In this picture Hawaii is denoted by the star.

Image: Nature Geoscience.

Air pollution from China and Asia has been rising for several decades but Hawaii had seemed to escape the ozone pollution that drifts east with the springtime winds.

Now a team of researchers has found that shifts in atmospheric circulation explain the trends in Hawaiian ozone pollution.

The researchers found that since the mid-1990s, these shifts in atmospheric circulation have caused China and Asian ozone pollution reaching Hawaii to be relatively low in spring but rise significantly in autumn.

The study, led by Meiyun Lin, an associate research scholar in the Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) at Princeton University and a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, was published in Nature Geoscience.

"The findings indicate that decade-long variability in climate must be taken into account when attributing U.S. surface ozone trends to rising China and Asian emissions," Lin said.

Although protective at high altitudes, ozone near the Earth's surface is a greenhouse gas and a health-damaging air pollutant. The longest record of ozone measurements in the U.S. dates back to 1974 in Hawaii.

Over the past few decades, emissions of ozone precursors in China and Asia has tripled, yet the 40-year Hawaiian record revealed little change in ozone levels during spring, but a surprising rise in autumn.

Through their research, Lin and her colleagues solved the puzzle. "We found that changing wind patterns 'hide' the increase in China and Asian pollution reaching Hawaii in the spring, but amplify the change in the autumn," Lin said.

Using chemistry-climate models and observations, Lin and her colleagues uncovered the different mechanisms driving spring versus autumn changes in atmospheric circulation patterns.

The stronger transport of China and Asian pollution to Hawaii during autumn since the mid-1990s corresponds to a positive pattern of atmospheric circulation variability known as the Pacific-North American pattern (PNA).

"This study not only solves the mystery of Hawaiian ozone changes since 1974, but it also has broad implications for interpreting trends in surface ozone levels globally," Lin said.

"Characterizing shifts in atmospheric circulation is of paramount importance for understanding the response of surface ozone levels to a changing climate and evolving global emissions of ozone precursors," she said.

More information: Tropospheric ozone trends at Mauna Loa Observatory tied to decadal climate variability; Nature Geoscience (2014) doi:10.1038/ngeo2066

Oppressive China's HVT-2: Domination of Space and Earth Orbit

An artist's rendering provided by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), on April 23, 2012 shows the Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HVT-2) which failed just minutes into a test flight in 2011

China for the first time has tested a hypersonic missile vehicle designed to travel several times the speed of sound, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

The test makes China the second country after the United States to conduct experimental flights with hypersonic vehicles, a technology that could allow armies to rapidly strike distant targets anywhere around the globe.

"We're aware of the test of the hypersonic vehicle but we are not commenting on it," said Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Pool, a Pentagon spokesman.

The flight was conducted on January 9 and the Chinese vehicle, dubbed the WU-14, is supposed to travel at Mach 10, or 10 times the speed of sound, according to a report in The Washington Free Beacon, an online publication.

Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2), (AFP Photo / Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA).

Chinese state-run broadcaster China Radio International quoted the defense ministry information office as saying: "China's planned domestic scientific research and experiments are normal and are not aimed at any country or target."

China refused to explicitly confirm or deny the test.

In its annual report on the Chinese military, the Pentagon made no mention of hypersonic test flights but did say the Chinese had built a hypersonic wind tunnel for experiments.

China's surging economic power has been matched by increasing military might, including investments in an aircraft carrier, anti-ship ballistic missiles, satellites and other hardware.

Three Republican lawmakers, including the House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard "Buck" McKeon, expressed concern over the test of what they called a "Chinese hypersonic cruise missile" and said the US military was falling behind.

"While round after round of defense cuts have knocked America's technological advantage on its back, the Chinese and other competitor nations push toward military parity with the United States; in some cases, as in this one, they appear to be leaping ahead of us," they said.

"This situation does nothing to support peaceful coexistence in the Pacific," added the statement, also signed by Representatives Randy Forbes and Mike Rogers.

The United States has placed a high priority on hypersonic projects, spending $200 million in fiscal year 2013 on three programs while conducting a number of test flights with hypersonic vehicles.

Callous China destroy homes in pursuit of Space Domination

China's callous disregard for human life has brought further tragedy to its beleaguered population.

Debris from the rocket carrying China's first moon rover plummeted to earth in a village more than a thousand kilometres from the launch site, crashing into two homes, a report said Tuesday.

The incident about nine minutes after the launch of the Chang'e-3 mission early Monday happened in Suining county in the central province of Hunan, which has been hit by space wreckage nearly 20 times, the Xiaoxiang Morning Post said.

"Three of the roof beams have crashed down on our house, and a big hole has been punched into our barn," one local resident told the paper.

"The huge sound scared the living daylights out of me," said another.

A picture showed a somewhat baffled-looking villager peering at the curved shape of what appeared to be a rocket nose-cone, below a gaping hole in his roof.

Authorities gave the residents 10,800 yuan ($1,800) and 5,200 yuan in compensation, the paper said. No one was injured.

A Long March-3B carrier rocket, China's most powerful such vehicle, blasted off at around 1:30 am Monday from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwestern China.

The lunar rover mission is part of China's ambitious space programme, which has the goal of establishing a permanent space station by 2020 and eventually sending a human to the moon.

But debris from China's numerous space launches has frequently found its way to Suining county, which has been hit by rocket parts nearly 20 times since the early 1990s, the Xiaoxiang Morning Post reported.

Last May wreckage from a rocket sent up by the Xichang Launch Centre crashed into homes and hit a high-voltage wire in the area, according to the Shanghai Daily News.

In October 2011 a steel frame weighing more than 250 kilograms (550 pounds) landed in a field after another satellite launch, and other wreckage pierced a house roof.

China Challenging Earth Security from Space

There is a view that the recent China's attempt to capture a satellite in space by using mechanical arm actually demonstrates their capability to develop counter-space technologies. This article attempts to put this experimentation in space by China into context.

The 'test' under discussion was initially viewed as a scientific experiment. China had launched three satellites on July 19, 2013 by using their Long March-4C launcher.

Officially, China has identified these satellites as 'scientific experimentation satellites to perform experiments on space maintenance technologies.' Also, these satellites are expected to be used for the observation of space debris. Amongst these three satellites (Chuang Xin-3, the Shiyan Weixing-7 and the Shijian-15) the satellite Shiyan Weixing-7 made a sudden manoeuvre on Aug 19, 2013.

It was a surprise rendezvous with a completely different satellite, Shijian 7 (SJ-7, Practice 7), launched by China in 2005. Interestingly, since its launch Shiyan Weixing-7 (SY-7) had completed a series of orbital changes and was put close to Chuang Xin-3(CX-3) but as mentioned, suddenly it conducted an unusual manoeuvre with a different satellite.

Space analysts are of the opinion that SY-7 has a robotic arm and it could rendezvous with CX-3 which might have been developed to act as target for the robotic arm experiment. But, instated it rendezvoused with SJ-7.

Presently, there is no clarity in regards to the exact nature of this 'maintenance technology' tested by China by doing such manoeuvre. It is likely that the mechanical arm was used to capture another satellite in space. But, as per some analysts, another possibility is that, 'the test involved detaching a part of one satellite and its release into a separate orbit, and the subsequent recapturing of this component by using the extension arm'.

Now, the basic challenge is to know whether this activity is a part of China's space warfare programme.

HYADES: UCSC new China Huawei astrophysics supercomputer system

The Hyades astrophysics computer system, seen from the front (left) and back (right), is the primary on-campus supercomputer used by astrophysics researchers in the departments of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Physics, as well as by computer scientists in the Baskin School of Engineering. 

Photo by P. Madau

State-of-the-art computer systems have been instrumental in making UC Santa Cruz one of the world's leading centers for computational astrophysics and planetary science.

A new supercomputer recently installed on campus provides an order of magnitude improvement in the ability of researchers to address fundamental questions in cosmology and astrophysics.

Its value is further enhanced by a high-capacity data storage system for archiving and sharing the results of astrophysical simulations.

The powerful new "Hyades" supercomputer will be used by UCSC researchers to simulate phenomena such as exploding stars, black holes, magnetic fields, planet formation, the evolution of galaxies, and how structure emerged in the cosmos after the big bang.

The $1.5 million machine was funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Major Research Instrumentation grant of $910,000, augmented by campus contributions and favorable deals from vendors such as Dell and Intel.

Paired with the supercomputer is a Huawei Universal Distributed Storage (UDS) system that provides one petabyte of high-performance storage capacity.

The Huawei UDS cloud storage system, on loan to the Center for Research in Storage Systems (CRSS) at the Baskin School of Engineering, is expected to become one of the largest repositories of astrophysical data outside of national facilities.



Shawfeng Dong, scientist and computing cluster administrator for the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, oversaw the installation and integration of the Hyades supercomputer and Huawei storage system.

Piero Madau

Piero Madau, professor of astronomy and astrophysics and principal investigator on the NSF grant, said, "Hyades is more than ten times better than our previous machine, and with the Huawei system providing storage for our simulation results, we can maximize the value of those results by making them available to the astrophysics community."

Joel Primack, professor of physics at UCSC and director of the UC High-Performance Astro Computing Center (UC-HiPACC), explained that supercomputer simulations can generate such huge amounts of complex data that it becomes difficult to analyze them on the fly.

An enormous amount of storage capacity is needed for the output of these simulations so that the results can be studied and shared with other researchers.

Joel Primack

"The Huawei system will be used to store our astrophysics results, not only from Hyades but also from simulations that we run at the big national supercomputing facilities, such as at NASA Ames or Oak Ridge National Laboratory," Primack said.

"Those facilities can only store the results for a limited time, and they also restrict access to them. Now, with the Huawei storage system, we can put our results on a local server."

The Theoretical Astrophysics at Santa Cruz (TASC) computational astrophysics group includes about 20 faculty and at least 50 postdoctoral researchers and graduate students in four departments: Applied Math and Statistics, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Physics.

In addition, computer scientists at the CRSS will be studying the performance of the new Huawei UDS system. Huawei is among the industry sponsors of CRSS, an Industry/University Cooperative Research Center supported by NSF.

Andy Hospodor

"We're interested in how scientists store and use big data in a system like Hyades," said CRSS executive director Andy Hospodor. "We have studied other operating environments and are very interested in learning about astrophysical data.

Our faculty and students will find ways to improve the performance, reliability, and energy efficiency of such large-scale data systems."

Aggressive China Tests New Heavy-Lift Rocket Engine - Video

China test-fires a new rocket engine for its planned Long March 5 heavy-lift booster in this brief clip from state-run television. 

The Long March 5 rocket is expected to continue China's push toward the domination of Space and a large space station in Earth orbit. 

Credit: CMSE/CCTV

Oppressive China Readying 1st Moon Rover for Lunar Domination and Exploitation

China’s next phase of its moon exploration program, the Chang’e-3 would soft land on the lunar surface and deploy instrument-laden rover.

CREDIT: Courtesy: Dragon in Space

As three Chinese astronauts zip around the Earth aboard a prototype space station, the country is gearing up to launch its first moon rover in the coming months.

China's robotic Chang'e 3 mission, reportedly slated to blast off toward the end of 2013, marks a big step forward in the nation's lunar exploration program. Chang'e 3 will become China's first craft to attempt a soft landing and rover deployment on the surface of the moon.

China’s multi-phase moon venture began with the orbiters Chang'e 1 and Chang'e 2, which launched in 2007 and 2010, respectively. Now Chinese space program officials are ready to shift to phase two.

CREDIT: Courtesy: Dragon in Space

Chang’e-3 mission to the moon is designed to unleash six-wheel rover to scour the lunar surface.

China helps Ecuador launch its first satellite into space

Ecuador launched its first satellite into space from China Friday morning, in a moment broadcast live on radio and television back home in Ecuador.

The "Pegaso" (Pegasus) nano-satellite, designed and built in Ecuador, set off aboard an unmanned rocket at 0413 GMT from the Jiuquan station in northern China.

Measuring just 10 by 10 by 75 centimeters (four by four by 30 inches), and weighing 1.2 kilograms (2.6 pounds), Pegaso will beam live video images back to Earth from an onboard camera.

"Welcome to the heavens, Pegaso. Welcome to space Ecuador. The mission is a success," said Ronnie Nader, Ecuador's first and only astronaut, who runs Ecuador's civilian space agency.

The Ecuadoran Space Agency plans a second satellite launch in July.

Oppressive China Opens Public 3D Printing Booth

While 3D printing may be touted as bringing manufacturing back to the United States, that doesn't mean the rest of the world hasn't taken notice of the technology.

Earlier this week, a 3D Printing Experience Pavilion opened in Beijing's DRC Industrial Design and Cultural Industry Base, where visitors were able to see how 3D printers work firsthand.

With a few hours to spare, they could even have their own head scanned and printed as a bust, which follows the 3D printing booth that opened in a Japanese mall last year.

Among the printed objects on display were custom phone cases, miniatures (including Aldebaran Robotics' NAO, which featured prominently at the Shanghai World Expo), and jewelry.

Visitors who wanted to be scanned had to remain still for around 15 minutes for the process to be completed, whereupon their likeness was printed in single color ABS plastic – a process which takes between two to three hours. 3Ders reports that the 3D Printing Pavilion was spear-headed by Beijing company Suntop-Tech, which is the Chinese distributor of Stratasys' Fortus and Dimension 3D printers.

CHINA's Openly Aggressive Strategy to Dominate Space

China is making increasingly aggressive plans to launch 20 spacecrafts this year,2013.

This will include the country's third lunar probe Chang'e-3 and manned spacecraft Shenzhou-10, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced.

The country is scheduled to conduct a manned space docking test between orbiting target module Tiangong-1 and Shenzhou-10, the corporation said during an internal work conference.

The Chang'e-3 moon probe is expected to land and stay there during the second stage of the country's lunar probe program, it said.

According to CASC, by 2020, China will have more than 200 spacecrafts operating in orbit, accounting for about 20 percent of the world's total.

How many of the countries who are already under threat from China's expansionist plans will suffer as a consequence of their imposed domination of the space above the Earth's atmosphere?

What safeguards can be put in place to prevent their militarisation of Space and to make the Earth's atmospheric zone a de-militarised zone (DMZ)?

CHINA: Stench of Air Pollution Soars unabated

Residents of Beijing and many other cities in China were warned to stay inside in mid-January 2013 as the nation faced one of the worst periods of air quality in recent history.

The Chinese government ordered factories to scale back emissions, while hospitals saw spikes of more than 20 to 30 percent in patients complaining of respiratory issues, according to news reports.

At the time that this Jan. 14 image was taken by satellite, ground-based sensors at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing reported PM2.5 measurements of 291 micrograms per cubic meter of air.

Fine, airborne particulate matter (PM) that is smaller than 2.5 microns (about one thirtieth the width of a human hair) is considered dangerous because it is small enough to enter the passages of the human lungs.

Most PM2.5 aerosol particles come from the burning of fossil fuels and biomass (wood fires and agricultural burning). The World Health Organization (WHO) considers PM2.5 to be safe when it is below 25.

Also at the time of the image, the air quality index (AQI) in Beijing was 341. An AQI above 300 is considered hazardous to all humans, not just those with heart or lung ailments. AQI below 50 is considered good.

On January 12, the peak of the current air crisis, AQI was 775 the U.S Embassy Beijing Air Quality Monitor—off the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scale—and PM2.5 was 886 micrograms per cubic meter.

› View image comparisons with annotations.

Image Credit: NASA/Terra - MODIS

China Launches their own GPS satellites with Military Capability

China has launched commercial and public services across the Asia-Pacific region on its domestic satellite navigation network built to rival and negate their dependency on the US global positioning system (GPS).

The Beidou, or compass, system started providing services to civilians in the region on Thursday and is expected to provide global coverage by 2020, state media reported.

Ran Chengqi, spokesman for the China Satellite Navigation Office said the system's performance was "comparable" to GPS, the China Daily reported.

"Signals from Beidou can be received in countries such as Australia," he said. It is the latest accomplishment in space technology for China, which aims to build a space station by the end of the decade and eventually send a manned mission to the moon.

China sees the multi-billion-dollar programme as a symbol of its rising global stature, growing technical expertise and a further step on their expansion plans towards global domination.

The Beidou system comprises 16 navigation satellites and four experimental satellites, the paper said. Ran added that the system would ultimately provide global navigation, positioning and timing services.

The start of commercial services comes a year after Beidou began a limited positioning service for China and adjacent areas.