The Orbital Index

Tiangong Space Station to receive its next crew and two new cargo vessels. The Shenzhou-20 mission, carrying three Taikonauts, is launching imminently on a Long March 2F/G rocket from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China. As with the previous five missions, the Shenzhou-20 mission will overlap with Shenzhou-19 for a few days—guaranteeing continuous occupation of Tiangong. The Shenzhou-20 and/or -21 crews could include Taikonauts from China’s Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau—but won’t be announced until just before launch. Sometime in the near future China will send the first international astronaut visitor, from Pakistan, to Tiangong. Opening the station to tourists is still being planned and may depend on Tiangong’s expansion through the addition of one-or-more modules. Tiangong is currently supplied by the Tianzhou cargo craft, which first flew to Tiangong in 2017 and was upgraded to transport an additional 500 kg to 7,400 kg beginning in 2023 with Tianzhou-6. However, two newly developed lower-cost cargo delivery systems, the Haolong and Qingzhou-1, have grown out of the China Manned Space Engineering Office’s solicitation of proposals and will be launching in the coming months. The reusable Haolong spaceplane is being developed by the Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute under the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China. Haolong will become China’s second vehicle, alongside Shenzhou, capable of returning hardware and experiments to Earth. Haolong is 10x8 meters, includes solar panels, and has a launch mass of <7,000 kg with a 1,800-kg cargo capacity. Haolong’s design has been compared to Sierra’s Dream Chaser due to its blunt-nosed fuselage, vertical fin, swept-back delta wings, horizontal landing technique, and a black-and-white color scheme. Haolong’s carrier will be the in development medium-lift, methalox-powered Zhuque-3 rocket. The commercial company Landspace is developing Zhuque-3 (also known as Suzaku-3) and is targeting Q3 2025 for a first flight. The other cargo vehicle making its debut is Qingzhou, developed by the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IAMCAS) and CAS Space, who will launch it. Qingzhou is a single-cabin non-reusable capsule with a 27-cubic-meter cargo bay, capable of carrying approximately 2,000 kg of supplies (video) to the station. The first orbital flight of the medium-lift, kerosene and liquid oxygen-fueled Lijian-2 rocket, also known as Kinetica-2, may launch a first Qingzhou craft as early as this September. China continues to make significant advancements in its space capabilities. 

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• Back in 2023 (in Issue 237) we mentioned that spectrographic analysis from JWST of exoplanet K2-18b detected methane and carbon dioxide as well as a tantalizing low confidence detection of dimethyl sulfide, a potential biomarker, which, on Earth, it is only produced by life. K2-18b is an 8.6 Earth-mass suspected Hycean exoplanet—one with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a water ocean-covered surface. The same authors have now published a follow up paper which increases the detection confidence to a 3σ significance. That’s interesting for calibrating our biosignature and exoplanet models, but it’s still probably not life. There is evidence of dimethyl sulfide in comets and the interstellar medium, so while the chemical may only be known to be made by life on Earth today, it seems likely that there are abiotic production processes in space.
• The planet Mercury’s unusually-large iron core and other characteristics may be the result of its formation through the collision of similar-sized protoplanets (paper). Simulations suggest that collisions between bodies of similar size account for one-third of all collisions in the early Solar System, and they predict Mercury’s characteristics well.
• The Earth’s oldest impact crater, around 3.5 billion years old, may have been identified in Western Australia (paper). It would have originally been more than 100 km wide, but is now largely invisible. Previously, the oldest known creator was 2.2 billion years old, so this is a significant step back in geologic time. Impacts such as this new (old) one may have started Earth’s critical geologic processes like mantle plumes and even subduction zones. It’s possible that "individual giant impactors (>10–50  km diameter) can initiate [these phenomena,] triggering a chain of events that formed cratons, the ancient nuclei of the continents."
• A team combined a machine learning algorithm which identifies fresh impact craters on Mars in MRO HiRISE data, with observations from NASA’s now-decommissioned InSight lander to correlate impacts with seismic events (paper, paper). They found a 21.5 meter-wide impact scar in Cerberus Fossae, 1,640 km from InSight, which caused more shaking than expected. The team hypothesizes that the waves were transmitted through the planet’s mantle, a result which may require updates to Mars planetary models.

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• The bra-maker who won the right to make astronaut spacesuits: “How Playtex, the women’s undergarment company, beat defense contractors for the contract to make the iconic Apollo spacesuits.”
• How does interferometry work?
• Drone footage of an icelandic volcano erupting from above.
• Here’s how a satellite ended up as a ghostly apparition on Google Earth.
• Lichens can survive almost anything, and some might survive Mars. (Maybe the lichens read KSR’s Mars Trilogy.)
• When New Horizons flew by Jupiter, it gained about 4,000 m/s of velocity, while Jupiter lost about 10^-21 m/s.
• Lucy took photos of Donaldjohnson during its flyby (animation below).