Buoyed by success … Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has charged the Indian space agency to fly an astronaut to the Moon by 2040. Engineers are only now outlining the architecture for how India might achieve this goal. On January 16, India achieved its first successful docking between two satellites in orbit. This made India the fourth nation, after the United States, Russia, and China, to demonstrate an independent docking capability in orbit.
A new vehicle joins China’s rocket fleet. China conducted the first launch of the Long March 8A rocket on February 11, carrying a second batch of satellites into orbit for the national Guowang project, Space News reports. The launcher took off from the Wenchang launch base in southern China and deployed at least eight satellites for the Guowang broadband megaconstellation, China’s answer to Starlink. China has published scant information about the design, size, or capabilities of the Guowang satellites, raising questions about the nature of the satellites, and concerns about transparency.
Only kinda new … The Long March 8A is an upgraded variant of the standard Long March 8, which debuted in December 2020. It features the same first stage and side boosters as the original but includes a newly designed 3.35-meter-diameter (11-foot) hydrogen-oxygen second stage, allowing a wider, 5.2-meter-diameter (17-foot) payload fairing. The rocket can carry about 7,000 kilograms (15,400 pounds) into Sun-synchronous orbit. China plans to use the expendable Long March 8 and 8A rockets for numerous launches. They will likely become workhorses for deploying China’s Guowang and Thousand Sails megaconstellations. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
Here’s the latest on Starship Flight 8. A little over a month after SpaceX’s large Starship launch ended in an explosion over several Caribbean islands, the company is preparing its next rocket for a test flight, Ars reports. According to a notice posted by the Federal Aviation Administration, the eighth test flight of the Starship vehicle could take place as early as February 26 from the Starbase launch site in South Texas. Company sources confirmed that this launch date is plausible, but it’s also possible that the launch could slip a day or two to Thursday or Friday of next week.
