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Category: long march 3b

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  • China extends its reach into the Solar System with launch of asteroid mission

    A Chinese spacecraft built to collect specimens from an unexplored asteroid and return them to Earth successfully launched Wednesday from a military-run spaceport in the country’s mountainous interior.

    Liftoff aboard a Long March 3B rocket at 1:31 pm EDT (17:31 UTC) from the Xichang launch base kicked off the second mission in a series of Chinese probes to explore the Solar System. This mission, designated Tianwen-2, follows the Tianwen-1 mission, which became the first Chinese spacecraft to land on Mars in 2021.

    Chinese officials confirmed the 2.1-metric ton Tianwen-2 spacecraft unfurled its fan-shaped solar arrays shortly after launch, marking an auspicious start to a decade-long tour of the Solar System.

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  • Do these Buddhist gods hint at the purpose of China’s super-secret satellites?

    Mission patches are a decades-old tradition in spaceflight. They can range from the figurative to the abstract, prompting valuable insights or feeding confusion. Some are just plain weird.

    Ars published a story a few months ago on spaceflight patches from NASA, SpaceX, Russia, and the NRO, the US government’s spy satellite agency, which is responsible for some of the most head-scratching mission logos.

    Until recently, China’s entries in the realm of spaceflight patches often lacked the originality found in patches from the West. For example, a series of patches for China’s human spaceflight missions used a formulaic design with a circular shape and a mix of red and blue. The patch for China’s most recent Shenzhou crew to the country’s Tiangong space station last month finally broke the mold with a triangular shape after China’s human spaceflight agency put the patch up for a public vote.

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