Chinese Shenzhou craft launches on key space mission

The Shenzhou 8 spacecraft is lifted into orbit by a Long March 2F rocket

China Shenzhou 8 unmanned launch vehicle to be a major space power to decide the next step in your search.

Spacecraft in orbit aboard a Long March 2F rocket and dock Tiangong -1 where it met the laboratory, to try to start in September.

This is the first time that China will have two spacecraft have been combined.

Capacity of the countries plan to build a space station by 2020 is implemented through the need of

To the Jiuquan launch site in the Gobi Desert 05:58 Long March carrier rocket took off, Tuesday (21:58 GMT Monday). Television cameras were on the climb to orbit.

About nine minutes into the flight of Shenzhou separated from the rocket's upper stage. Confirmed that the solar panels were deployed had received it shortly after.

The Shenzhou will be in a position for a few days before docking, 340 kilometers above the Earth will occur experiments.

Vehicles will be using radar and optical sensors to calculate their proximity to each other and with their final approach and contact.

They spend 12 days orbiting the globe before they will try to separate and re-docking. Finally, Shenzhou 8 release and the return capsule for return to Earth.

This class will allow experiments to be recovered for analysis. German Space Agency, fish, plants, insects, bacteria and also for a number of biological studies with human cancer cells has made an experimental box.

1. Gong Tian Long March 2 F rocket on September -1 was started
2. Unmanned laboratory unit was a 350 km high orbit
3. 8 Shenzhou and Tiangong-1 will attempt to dock with the meeting
4. The life support system will test key technologies as
5. China to build a space station is starting around 60-2020 tons

Assuming that the company is doing well, two manned missions (9 Shenzhou and 10), probably similar in 2012 to try to dockings.

Yuhangyuans - - Chinese astronauts for up to two weeks aboard vehicles are expected to be combined. The Chinese media are speculating that one of these missions, it can become a woman to take the first yuhangyuan.

10.5 Long Tiangong 1 module was launched on 29 September and is well-spent, according to Chinese officials.

Shenzhou 8 is slightly lower than his work with the car in preparation for the upcoming concert rotated 180 degrees

Beijing to the next stage in step-by-step approach to manned space operations, the acquisition of skills is seen as the Shenzhou Tian Gong and bunks.

It is a learning curve that China hopes will eventually lead to the creation of a space station, beginning late in the decade.

At almost 60 tons in mass, the next a 400 - ton international order U.S., Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan, directed by stage, but less than mere presence in the air station would still constitute a remarkable achievement.

Concept picture describes a kernel module, about 20 to 22 tons, is flanked by two smaller ships laboratory.

Officials say the robot, the International Space (ISS) station today, fuel, food, water, air and keep out of the parts will be delivered by cargo ships like cargo.

Billions of dollars invested in China's space program.

Tue planet should see the first round next week - Yinghuo 1 - begins its journey to the red planet.

Asian countries also have their own satellite navigation system called Beidou-Compass are transmitted.

There are big rockets. Long March 5 will be able, for the low-Earth orbit are more than 20 tons. The promise muscles, again, there is a need to build a space station.

New Earth-observing satellite launch by NASA

Delayed Earth-observing satellite to launch from California early Friday

After a five-year delay, an Earth-observing satellite will be launched to test new technologies aimed at improving weather forecasts and monitoring climate change.

The $1.5 billion NASA mission comes in a year of weather extremes from the Midwest tornado outbreak to the Southwest wildfires to hurricane-caused flooding in New England.

"We've already had 10 separate weather events, each inflicting at least $1 billion in damages," said Louis Uccellini of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The satellite will lift off before dawn Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., aboard a Delta 2 rocket that will boost it into an orbit some 500 miles high.

The space agency already has a fleet of satellites circling the Earth, taking measurements of the atmosphere, clouds and oceans. But many are aging and need replacement.

The latest -- about the size of a small school bus -- is more sophisticated. It carries five different types of instruments to collect environmental data, including four that never before have flown into space.

One of the satellite's main jobs is to test key technologies that will be used by next-generation satellites set to launch in a few years.

NOAA meteorologists plan to feed the observations into their weather models to better anticipate and track hurricanes, tornadoes and other extreme weather.

The information will "help us understand what tomorrow will bring," whether it's the next-day forecast or long-term climate change, said Andrew Carson, the mission's program executive at NASA headquarters.

The satellite is part of a bigger program with a troubled history. Originally envisioned as a joint civil-military weather satellite project, ballooning costs and schedule delays caused the White House last year to dissolve the partnership.

Under the restructuring, the Defense Department is building its own military satellites while NASA is developing a new generation of research satellites for NOAA. Friday's launch is considered the first step toward that goal.

The satellite was supposed to fly in 2006, but problems during the development of several instruments forced a delay. NASA invested about $895 million in the mission while NOAA and the Air Force contributed $677 million.

For the launch, NASA invited 20 of its Twitter followers to Vandenberg, where they will receive front-row seats to view the liftoff.

Once in orbit, the satellite, built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., will spend the next five years circling the Earth from pole to pole about a dozen times a day. Data will be transmitted to a ground station in Norway and routed to the United States via fiber optic cable. NASA will manage the mission for the first three months before turning it over to NOAA.

Grave-robbing robot could revive dead satellites

  Satellites at the end of their life, often performed in a "graveyard" orbit to make room for replacements. DARPA has now proposed a desecration robot that can stitch together parts of dead satellites to these new, avoiding the enormous costs associated with the launch of components in space.

DARPA's Phoenix program aims to re-purpose ground robotic systems, such as those used by surgeons to operate on patients remotely, so that a person on earth to satellites to separate and reuse expensive components such as antennas.

The program will also develop a new type of nano-satellite hitch a ride aboard a normal satellite launcher and throws it right when it reaches orbit. The grave-robber robot can scoop up these nano and add them to an old antenna on a new low-cost communication platform to create.

Plans are in place for a first test mission in 2015 with robotic harvesting components in an existing satellite retired and reconfigure them into a new purpose. But the grave-robber will not be able to go after an old satellite - the Outer Space Treaty means that any object sent into space will remain property of the country, to launch, although it was dumped in a graveyard orbit.