I confess I had somehow completely overlooked the name given to the intended future Chinese space station: "Tiangong" translates as "The Heavenly Palace" and to my mind it's the best name given to anything launched by man. I hope it goes well, though I wish they'd be a little bit less secretive about it all ( Read more... )

Almost exactly a year ago, the Chinese tested (or demonstrated) an anti-satellite weapon by destroying an old weather satellite. This was a bad thing. The debris cloud it produced is a huge hazard to spacecraft (both manned and unmanned) to say nothing of the political implications. With the energies and velocities involved in space, hitting an ( Read more... )

China. Desert. These words normally make me think of an ever-expanding dust bowl which is about to consume ancient towns or even threatening to engulf Beijing itself. So I was rather pleasantly surprised this morning to hear a claim that the trend of desertification has been successfully reversed - though in all fairness, I do tend to take claims ( Read more... )

Anybody following the news recently has no doubt heard about North Korea test firing its new Taepodong-2 missile. There's been a plethora of articles about it, discussing whether or not they were really going to launch through to considering possible reasons why they launched, and the international community's response to it. I just had a cursory ( Read more... )