On January 23, 2010, Chinese magazine “Astronaut” announced its selection of “Top 10 manned space exploration news in 2009″ (2009年十大载人航天新闻). It is the first such activity by a combined committee of Chinese astronauts and experts in manned missions. The committee of 48 people includes; Lu Shanguang(陈善广), Liu Yu (刘宇), Qin Wenbo (秦文波) and six Chinese astronauts. Yang Liwei (杨利伟) read the announcement. The result is:
- China started the second round of hangtianyuan (astronaut) candidates selection and allowed females for the first time;
- It is confirmed for the first time that there is water on the Moon;
- Mars-500 experiment simulating manned flight to Mars finished its second, 105-day stage experiment;
- The construction of China’s fourth space launch site — Hainan space launch site started;
- US Ares I-X successfully completed a test launch;
- Russian Yuri Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center is transferred to Russian Federal Space Agency from the Defense Ministry;
- Japan launched its first H-II Transfer Vehiclesuccessfully;
- Internal Space Station is staffed to its full capacity of six members for the first time;
- European Astronaut Corps selected six new astronauts for the first time after its establishment;
- Hubble Space Telescope had its last service mission.
It is interesting to see that two pieces of China related news ranked No 1. and No. 4 and Hubble service mission is the last one. The USA is mentioned only once even though many of them are related to NASA (see No. 2, 5, 8 and 10).
Tags: Astronaut, China, chinese, 航天员, 载人航天, Hubble, Manned space mision, news, top 10, 杨利伟, 中国
January 25, 2010 at 7:36 pm |
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