Highlights SpaceDaily News
Rocket blasts off carrying first Chinese crew to new space station.
The first astronauts for China's new space station blasted off Thursday for the country's longest crewed mission to date, a landmark step in establishing Beijing as a major space power. The trio launched on a Long March-2F rocket for the Tiangong station, where they will spend three months, in a much-anticipated blast-off broadcast live on state TV. Lift-off happened at 9:22 am (0122 GMT) from the Jiuquan launch centre in northwest China's Gobi desert, with the rocket rising in clouds of smoke against a blue sky. After about 10 minutes it reached orbit and the space craft separated from the rocket, to loud applause in the control room among rows of blue-suited engineers. State broadcaster CCTV showed a live feed from inside the spacecraft, with the three astronauts lifting their helmet visors and one smiling and waving at the camera. Another floated a pen just off his lap in zero-gravity as he browsed the flight manual. Cameras outside the craft broadcast live images of the Earth below.
Read more at https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Rocket_blasts_off_carrying_first_Chinese_crew_to_new_space_station_999.html
Astronauts install new rollout solar panels on International Space Station
Astronauts Thomas Pesquet of France and Shane Kimbrough of the United States spacewalked outside the International Space Station on Wednesday as they began the painstaking process of installing new solar panels to boost the orbital outpost's deteriorating power systems. It was the first of several excursions to augment the ISS's existing eight solar arrays, with the first pair operating continuously since December 2000. The spacewalking duo were installing the first of six new rollout panels -- but problems with display and controls on Kimbrough's spacesuit forced him to return to the station to reset his systems.
When the mission is complete, the ISS will be back to operating at 215 kilowatts. For comparison, a desktop computer and monitor runs at around 270 watts, and a small refrigerator uses about 725 watts Part of the installation procedure has to be carried out while the ISS is in the Earth's shadow, when the station is operating on battery power. The combination of the original arrays and six newer and smaller arrays that are more efficient will boost power by 20 to 30 percent.
It was Pesquet's third spacewalk and Kimbrough's seventh.
Read more at https://www.solardaily.com/reports/Astronauts_install_new_rollout_solar_panels_on_International_Space_Station_999.html
Coronal mass ejections and cosmic ray observations at Syowa Station in the Antarctic
Solar activities, such as CME(Coronal Mass Ejection), cause geomagnetic storm that is a temporary disturbance of the Earth's magnetosphere. Geomagnetic storms can affect GPS positioning, radio communication, and power transmission system. Solar explosions also emit radiation, which can affect satellite failures, radiation exposure to aircraft crew, and space activity. Therefore, it is important to understand space weather phenomena and their impact on the Earth.
Space weather research by continuous observation of cosmic rays on the ground is mainly conducted using observation data from neutron monitors and multi-directional muon detectors. Since the phenomenon of space weather is on a short-term, days-long scale, it is effective to investigate changes in the flow of cosmic rays for several hours, which requires a total sky monitor of cosmic rays. In the muon detector, the global muon detector network (GMDN) has been observing space weather phenomena since 2006, and in the neutron monitor, the Spaceship Earth project constitutes a similar observation network and the role of the all-sky monitor. Until now, observations by neutron monitors and muon detectors have been performed independently, and progress has been made in space weather research.
The cosmic ray observation data at Syowa Station, including the phenomenon in August 2018, which was the subject of this research, is published on the website and updated daily here - http://polaris.nipr.ac.jp/~cosmicrays/
