Space
Space race? Russia to partner with China to build the first lunar base after rejecting US space deal
Russia threw down the gauntlet to the United States after announcing plans to collaborate with China to build the first lunar base. An Order of the Government of Russia detailing the plan was published in February of 2021.
“Roscosmos has completed domestic proceedings to harmonize the Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of the Russian Federation and the Government of People’s Republic of China on cooperation to create the International Lunar Research Station,” Roscosmos, Russia’s state corporation for space activities, told SpaceNews.
Russia previously ignored a chance to team up with the U.S. after refusing to sign the Artemis Accords, an international agreement detailing guidelines for those who wish to participate in the Artemis program, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s mission to the moon.
The forthcoming deal should fuel a new space race between the two countries as NASA also plans to build a lunar base as part of the Artemis program.
China and Russia’s lunar base plan
China came up with the idea for the International Lunar Research Station. The objective of the project is to create a long-term robotic presence on the moon by the next decade, before eventually establishing a sustained human presence.
China’s Chang’e-6, -7 and -8 missions, as well as Russia’s Luna 27 probe, will make up the first leg of the project. The two partner countries will then expand their operations by the early 2030s by launching long-term robotic and potentially short-crewed missions. The goal for 2036 to 2045 is to establish a long-term human presence.
The pair plans to build humanity’s first sharing platform on the lunar south pole and support scientific exploration, technical experiments and the use of lunar resources.
The official announcement of the project coincided with last year’s Global Space Exploration Conference, according to Roscosmos, which was held in the city of St. Petersburg in Russia.
The project is also open to other nations. The European Space Agency (ESA) is said to be closely monitoring the program in anticipation of joining. At the same time, the agency is committed to America’s space programs after signing a memorandum of understanding with NASA last year.
Russia rejects space deal with US
The deal with China comes after Russia refused to join eight other nations in signing the Artemis Accords during the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in October of 2020.
Drafted by the U.S., the accord lays out guidelines for the peaceful exploration of outer space. The participating nations are Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and the U.S.
The accord was made in preparation for NASA’s Artemis program. This mission will see the creation of a lunar base camp on the moon’s south pole and an outpost called “Gateway,” which would orbit the moon and serve as a docking station for spacecraft.
Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin rejected the accord because of Gateway. The development of the outpost, according to Rogozin, appears to eschew the existing intergovernmental agreement (IGA) established for the International Space Station (ISS). Signed by the U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan and ESA member states, the IGA laid out a cooperative framework for the peaceful use of the ISS.
“The most important thing here would be to base [the Gateway] program on the principles of international cooperation which were used in order to fly the ISS program,” Rogozin said in press conference following an IAC session.
But NASA already vowed to develop Gateway using the ISS agreement alongside the Artemis Accords. According to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, the agency is working with each ISS partner to draw up memorandums of understanding, which will extend the ISS agreement for use on the planned outpost.
“The Gateway uses the intergovernmental agreement established for the International Space Station,” Bridenstine said after the session.
“All of the protocols that exist on the International Space Station would also exist for the Gateway, so I don’t think that that’s a challenge,” he continued.
Learn more about upcoming space missions at Space.news.
(Article by Virgilio Marin republished from Citizens.news)
A former US Air Force fighter pilot asserts that he has deciphered
the method behind the extraordinary maneuvers of UFOs, reports dailystar.co.uk.
Over
the past two decades, numerous military encounters with these enigmatic
crafts have been reported, prompting a significant investigation by the
Pentagon.
One of the most renowned sightings occurred during the
USS Nimitz encounter, where fighter pilots witnessed a UFO descending
from 28,000 feet to just above sea level in less than a second.
This
astonishing movement would imply that the craft reached a staggering
speed of 19,000 miles per hour, a velocity that would be fatal to any
human pilot.
According
to Chris Lehto, a former USAF pilot, the craft exhibits two key
characteristics: it moves without inertia, essentially lacking weight,
and it accelerates at an incredibly rapid pace without affecting its
surroundings.
Image: NATO Allied Air Command/Facebook
Chris
believes that the explanation lies within a technology that seems
straight out of science fiction. He proposes that the answer to the UFO
enigma lies in the Alcubierre Drive, a theoretical interstellar engine
conceptualized by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994.
The
Alcubierre Drive employs a form of “space warp” technology, reminiscent
of what has been depicted in episodes of Star Trek. By bending space, a
craft inside a “warp bubble” could potentially travel at or even
surpass the speed of light without violating the known laws of physics.
While
the Alcubierre Drive remains a hypothetical concept with challenges to
overcome, Chris notes that the required energy is no longer believed to
be unattainably large.
Patents
filed with the US patent office outline the potential workings of the
drive, as well as another groundbreaking technology theorized by
American aerospace engineer Salvatore Pais.
Pais suggests that
high-powered rotating magnets could theoretically eliminate an object’s
inertia, and he has filed a patent for a starship based on this
principle.
However, Chris maintains skepticism regarding Pais’
theory. He explains that while Pais’s patent applications for the US
Navy attracted attention for their potential energy-related
applications, doubts have been raised about their feasibility. There is
speculation that they may be scams, pseudoscience, or disinformation
intended to mislead adversaries of the United States.
Alternatively,
rival theories propose that the “Tic Tac” UFO is a classified Pentagon
project testing similar advanced technologies discussed by Chris.
Scientists say they have found evidence of a new Earth-like
planet that has suddenly appeared in our Solar System and is orbiting
the Sun.
Physicists, including those from the National Astronomical Observatory
of Japan, said the planet is likely to be the mysterious ‘Planet Nine’
that was hypothesised to exist in the far outer edges of the Solar
System.
Several studies in the past have suggested there is likely an
undiscovered planet beyond the Kuiper Belt – a stellar disk of materials
such as asteroids, space rocks, comets around the Sun in the outer
Solar System past the orbit of Neptune.
Independent.co.uk reports: In the new research, published recently in The Astronomical Journal, scientists
found that some of the objects in the Kuiper Belt behave in a way
indicative of the presence of a small planet among them.
One such object, they said, is about 500 astronomical units (AU) from
the Sun, where 1 AU is the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
In comparison Neptune is at a distance of 30 AUs from the Sun.
Some of these were also found to have “odd” orbits suggesting they
are being pull by the gravity of a cosmic entity larger than those that
typically influence such objects.
Computer simulations run by the scientists indicate that the most
likely explanation for the observations was another hidden planet in the
Kuiper Belt.
“We predict the existence of an Earth-like planet,” researchers wrote in the study.
“It is plausible that a primordial planetary body could survive in
the distant Kuiper Belt as a Kuiper Belt planet (KBP), as many such
bodies existed in the early solar system,” they added.
If such a planet exists, researchers say it would have a mass about
1.5 to 3 times that of Earth with an inclination of about 30 degrees.
They say the theorised planet’s orbit would likely place it between 250 and 500 AU from the Sun.
Researchers say the discovery of such a planet close to the Kuiper
Belt can unravel new constraints on planet formation and evolution.
“In conclusion, the results of the KBP scenario support the existence
of a yet-undiscovered planet in the far outer solar system,” scientists
noted.
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