China says there’s no space race in Asia

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING – Over a few short months, Japan, China, and India will all have lunar probes orbiting the moon, sparking talk of a new space race in Asia. China, for one, takes exception at that characterization.

On Thursday, a top official in its secretive military-backed lunar explorer program defended the probe launched last week as an innovation that is part of a future wave of cooperation, not competition, in outer space.

“It’s all peaceful,” said Pei Zhaoyu, assistant director of the Lunar Exploration Program Center, when asked whether a space race was on. “The countries involved in lunar exploration are developing an understanding. They’re evolving a mechanism for cooperation.”

China’s launch of the Chang’e 1 satellite put in motion an ambitious space exploration plan, and came just weeks after rival Japan launched its own moon probe. India plans to send its own lunar probe into space in April.

The three missions represent a new wave of lunar exploration following those begun in the Cold War by the United States and former Soviet Union, and another bout in the 1990s that saw Japan and Western Europe joining the club.

James Oberg, a space consultant in Houston, said the current glut of lunar missions is less of a space race and more a matter of those countries developing new technologies at similar rates. All three have lately developed more powerful booster rockets, along with experience with payloads gleaned from launching commercial satellites, said Oberg, a veteran of 22 years at NASA Mission Control.

However, he added that such missions do offer tangible benefits for a country’s business and reputation.

“Doing ‘moon probes’ advertises a country’s technological level and that’s good for high-tech exports, and for validating the threat-level of its high-tech weapons,” Oberg said in recent comments to The Associated Press.

Oberg likened the Chinese probe, named after a mythical Chinese goddess who flew to the moon Similar, to the orbiting U.S. moon explorers “Clementine” and “Prospector” launched in the 1990s.

In Beijing, Pei told reporters all was well with the satellite, which is due to move into lunar capture orbit Monday, when it will allow itself to be caught by the moon’s gravity.

“All the systems on board are currently in excellent condition and the spacecraft is on the expected trajectory,” said Pei, who is also spokesman for the China National Space Administration — China’s version of NASA.

The lunar mission adds depth to a Chinese space program that has sent astronauts orbiting around the Earth twice in the past four years and is a source of great national pride.

Pei dwelt extensively on the technical aspects of the lunar mission at a news conference that illustrated a growing openness within the space program.

Foreign observers were present at the satellite’s Oct. 24 launch from the Xichang site in the southwestern province of Sichuan, Pei said. He said data gathered during the yearlong mission would be shared with scientists from other nations.

China sent its first satellite into Earth orbit in the 1970s, but the space program only seriously took off in the 1980s, growing apace with the country’s booming economy.

In 2003, China became only the third country in the world after the United States and Russia to put its own astronauts into space.

But China also alarmed the international community in January when it blasted an old satellite into oblivion with a land-based anti-satellite missile.

Pei dodged a question about the anti-satellite weapon, but gave the budget for the engineering stage of the lunar program as $187 million.

“China has always adhered to the principle of peaceful use of outer space,” he said. “All goals, including engineering goals, and scientific goals, are without military purposes.”

Carried into space by a Long March 3A rocket, the Chang’e 1 satellite is expected to transmit its first photo back to China in late November.

It will survey the lunar surface using stereo radar and other tools as a precursor to a planned landing on the moon’s surface in 2012 and a recoverable mission by 2020.

Pei said China was being careful not to travel territory already covered by the space programs of Russia, the U.S., Japan and the European Space Agency.

He said that by launching the probe, China was playing to its science and technology strengths, while laying the groundwork for future innovations and benefiting the country’s economic and social development — a reference to the Communist Party’s use of the space program to drum up patriotism and loyalty.

“China’s lunar program got off to a relatively late start, but we hope to … try to do something that no one has done before,” Pei said.

“We’re fully confident that alongside the progress in our science and technology, our lunar and deep space exploration programs will advance rapidly from strength to strength,” he said.

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com)

China says there’s no space race in Asia

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING – Over a few short months, Japan, China, and India will all have lunar probes orbiting the moon, sparking talk of a new space race in Asia. China, for one, takes exception at that characterization.

On Thursday, a top official in its secretive military-backed lunar explorer program defended the probe launched last week as an innovation that is part of a future wave of cooperation, not competition, in outer space.

“It’s all peaceful,” said Pei Zhaoyu, assistant director of the Lunar Exploration Program Center, when asked whether a space race was on. “The countries involved in lunar exploration are developing an understanding. They’re evolving a mechanism for cooperation.”

China’s launch of the Chang’e 1 satellite put in motion an ambitious space exploration plan, and came just weeks after rival Japan launched its own moon probe. India plans to send its own lunar probe into space in April.

The three missions represent a new wave of lunar exploration following those begun in the Cold War by the United States and former Soviet Union, and another bout in the 1990s that saw Japan and Western Europe joining the club.

James Oberg, a space consultant in Houston, said the current glut of lunar missions is less of a space race and more a matter of those countries developing new technologies at similar rates. All three have lately developed more powerful booster rockets, along with experience with payloads gleaned from launching commercial satellites, said Oberg, a veteran of 22 years at NASA Mission Control.

However, he added that such missions do offer tangible benefits for a country’s business and reputation.

“Doing ‘moon probes’ advertises a country’s technological level and that’s good for high-tech exports, and for validating the threat-level of its high-tech weapons,” Oberg said in recent comments to The Associated Press.

Oberg likened the Chinese probe, named after a mythical Chinese goddess who flew to the moon Similar, to the orbiting U.S. moon explorers “Clementine” and “Prospector” launched in the 1990s.

In Beijing, Pei told reporters all was well with the satellite, which is due to move into lunar capture orbit Monday, when it will allow itself to be caught by the moon’s gravity.

“All the systems on board are currently in excellent condition and the spacecraft is on the expected trajectory,” said Pei, who is also spokesman for the China National Space Administration — China’s version of NASA.

The lunar mission adds depth to a Chinese space program that has sent astronauts orbiting around the Earth twice in the past four years and is a source of great national pride.

Pei dwelt extensively on the technical aspects of the lunar mission at a news conference that illustrated a growing openness within the space program.

Foreign observers were present at the satellite’s Oct. 24 launch from the Xichang site in the southwestern province of Sichuan, Pei said. He said data gathered during the yearlong mission would be shared with scientists from other nations.

China sent its first satellite into Earth orbit in the 1970s, but the space program only seriously took off in the 1980s, growing apace with the country’s booming economy.

In 2003, China became only the third country in the world after the United States and Russia to put its own astronauts into space.

But China also alarmed the international community in January when it blasted an old satellite into oblivion with a land-based anti-satellite missile.

Pei dodged a question about the anti-satellite weapon, but gave the budget for the engineering stage of the lunar program as $187 million.

“China has always adhered to the principle of peaceful use of outer space,” he said. “All goals, including engineering goals, and scientific goals, are without military purposes.”

Carried into space by a Long March 3A rocket, the Chang’e 1 satellite is expected to transmit its first photo back to China in late November.

It will survey the lunar surface using stereo radar and other tools as a precursor to a planned landing on the moon’s surface in 2012 and a recoverable mission by 2020.

Pei said China was being careful not to travel territory already covered by the space programs of Russia, the U.S., Japan and the European Space Agency.

He said that by launching the probe, China was playing to its science and technology strengths, while laying the groundwork for future innovations and benefiting the country’s economic and social development — a reference to the Communist Party’s use of the space program to drum up patriotism and loyalty.

“China’s lunar program got off to a relatively late start, but we hope to … try to do something that no one has done before,” Pei said.

“We’re fully confident that alongside the progress in our science and technology, our lunar and deep space exploration programs will advance rapidly from strength to strength,” he said.

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com)

Enterprise Mission Press Conference

PRG
Paradigm Research Group

Forwarded Press Release – 10/26/07

Re: Enterprise Mission Press Conference
National Press Club, Zenger Room
Tuesday, October 30, 9 am

Are Classified NASA Lunar Findings Secretly Pressuring the Aging Shuttle Program to Completion by 2010, to Make Way for “Constellation” — and the New “Space Race” to the Moon?

Washington, DC – Japan is currently in lunar orbit with the most sophisticated lunar mission since Apollo. China is about to launch a major unmanned lunar mission, on October 24th. In April, 2008 India will launch its first comprehensive unmanned lunar mission. And, Russia recently announced its own ambitious lunar plans — for not only sending cosmonauts to the Moon by 2025, but establishment of a permanent moon base soon after.

All this on the heels of President George W. Bush’s own “Vision for Space Exploration” (VSE) – his sudden decision to “return Americans to manned lunar exploration” … made inexplicably, in the middle of his war.

Why this abrupt international focus on a 21st Century Moon Program — after over 30 years of the Moon being totally ignored? Did Apollo find “something” of major importance on the Moon, which NASA just forgot to tell the rest of us?

The press conference will be lead be Richard C. Hoagland: former NASA consultant; CBS News Science Advisor during the Apollo lunar missions; co-author of “Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA” (currently #1 on Amazon’s list for “Astronomy,” and “Space Science”); and head of The Enterprise Mission. Ken Johnston, former NASA Manager of the Data and Photo Control Department of NASA’s Lunar Receiving Laboratory at MSC during the Apollo Program, will present supporting NASA documentation.

According to the Enterprise Mission:

This is an era of increasing concern for ever more government secrecy and expanding classification. Hoagland and Johnston will demonstrate that this “less than forthright NASA decision-making” actually began a long time ago.

Citing specifics from the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, Hoagland will present startling evidence that, contrary to assumptions made by politicians, members of the press and public for almost half a century, NASA is NOT a “civilian” space agency, but is in fact “a defense agency of the United States”.

As a tax-supported federal institution, NASA’s 1958 Congressional charter specifically instructs “Sec. 205 … (d) no [NASA] information which has been classified for reasons of national security shall be included in any [NASA] report made under this section [of the Act] …” [Emphasis added].

So, what criteria does NASA apply to classifying its scientific or engineering information? And, what major NASA discoveries have never been reported – either to the Congress, the American people or the press — because of NASA’s legal ability to lie? And why could these now be politically significant …?

Says Hoagland “the evidence that NASA is something other than the ‘benevolent civilian science institution’ it has pretended to be for 50 years, is as overwhelming now as it is disturbing.

It is this ‘dark mission,’ allowing the president to legally classify NASA’s most important scientific and technological findings without even other NASA scientists or engineers, or Congress, the press or the American people becoming aware, which we contend is now impelling this new 21st Century Space Race.

A Race whose outcome – unlike the first US/USSR race for ‘mere’ political prestige 50 years ago — will literally shape the life of every human being now alive on Earth, through the startling technological discoveries we have evidence that NASA made on the Moon during Apollo … brought back to Earth … and then successfully kept secret for more than a generation.”

Supporting Hoagland’s highly controversial data and analysis, Ken Johnston, former LRL manager of NASA’s photographic lunar archive in the early 1970′s, will give a first-hand account of how he was specifically instructed by his NASA managers toward the end of the Apollo Program to destroy unique Apollo records of what the astronauts actually recorded on the Moon, rather than donate them to a university, high school or other public archive.

Hoagland and Johnston – using these 30-year-old original Apollo images that Johnston, in disobeying that direct order, personally preserved – will illustrate exactly what NASA hoped would never become known: the apparent remains of extensive lunar ruins on the Moon, one of the key projected discoveries cited by a pre-Apollo NASA/Brookings study as “capable of destroying civilization.”

Hoagland and Johnston will then compare this 30-year-old data with current Apollo images being posted on official NASA websites around the world – revealing total confirmation of Johnston’s 30-year-old claims – including, an actual astonishing example of the extraordinarily advanced technology the Apollo astronauts may have returned to Earth in the last Mission of Apollo….

Richard C. Hoagland and Ken Johnston will be available for interviews immediately following the briefing which will last from 9:00 to 9:45 AM with a question and answer period following until 11:00 AM.

Extraterrestrials forcing the US astronauts off the moon. Part of the quarentine…

Translated by Maria Gousseva pravda.ru

One of Russia’s central television channels, RTR, has recently aired a documentary about US astronauts who allegedly came across extraterrestrial civilizations. The film showed Russian ufologist Vladimir Azhazha and astronomer Yevgeny Arsyukhin telling that expeditions to the Moon launched within 1969-1972 allegedly came across UFOs.

The researchers state that flying objects of extraterrestrial origin were persistently spying on American Apollos. They said the expeditions to the Moon looked very much like a race and presented a film demonstrating a luminous object closely following an American spaceship. Records of communication between astronauts and the Mission Control Center were also included into the film but they were absolutely inaudible as they had been purposefully jammed by Americans. They expected that the expeditions would find something astonishing on the Moon and with the view of keeping their communication with the surface secret they encoded their messages to the MCC. When the records of communication were later deciphered it turned out that the US missions came across lunar bases, remains of space vehicles and deserted towns on the Moon.

The film stated that lunar creatures would not tolerate the presence of Earth dwellers for long. When Americans brought a dummy car to furrow Moon craters, the creatures living on the satellite began to demonstrate their furious protest against the US presence on the Moon. Filmmakers said that green dwellers of the Moon told Americans to go home as they wanted to keep secret the sublunar bases that they used to observe the life on the Earth. It was alleged that NASA was afraid of conflicting with a highly developed civilization and immediately stopped the program. Does the film sound believable?

In a couple of days, Americans demonstrated their documentary about the Apollo expeditions, In the Shadow of the Moon, with records of the flights to the Moon that were specially processed after the video archives of the Moon program had disappeared. Is it true that the archives were lost? It seems that the CIA wanted to wipe out tracks of a contact between US astronauts and extraterrestrials.

It is an open secret by the way that films demonstrating the landing of American astronauts on the Moon and Neil Armstrong’s walk about the lunar surface were lost. What is more, records telling about astronauts’ health during the flights to the Moon, information about spaceships and other 700 messages sent from the board of spaceships launched in the framework of the Apollo program are also missing. Before the late 1970s the films had been kept at the US National Archives then were moved to NASA and later disappeared at all. It took NASA officials a year to conduct searches of the films but they managed to find just not more than ten films. Will anyone believe that evidence of US’s biggest triumph may so easily disappear from the NASA archives?

An expertise of the Moon pictures demonstrated in the Russian documentary revealed that they were no ordinary photos but simply some daub. Deputy director of the Comparative Planetology Laboratory Doctor of geological sciences Alexander Bazilevsky says that experts are from time to time requested to conduct an expertise of this type of photos. The Lunar Orbiter stations shot the Moon surface, then developed films right on board the spaceships and telecast them to the surface. As a result of this film development any unexpected things or elements could appear on pictures, and it explains why one of the pictures showed in the documentary had the word ‘spire’. In a word, none of the pictures demonstrated in the documentary can be the evidence of aliens’ existence on the Moon.

This is strange that films with really important evidence can disappear from NASA. Several years ago, over 100 g of lunar soil and meteorites were stolen from the collection of the Johnson Space Center. And that was not the only incident of the kind there. A former NASA official explained that the unique films had been probably lost after they were several times moved from one place to another within the past forty years.

The NASA official who requested anonymity also told a really interesting story. When President Bush announced recommencement of the lunar program the National Aeronautics and Space Administration asked aged researchers who had taken part in the Apollo expeditions earlier to meet experts who were going to start a new mission. One of the aged researchers who came to the meeting had designed a device to measure lunar radiation. The device could measure radiation before humans landed the planet and could transmit information even when the Apollos were back to the surface. In the framework of the program heaps of records were collected. But when the program was no longer financed and stopped the bobbins with ciphered films were discarded. But the old engineer took the films and placed them to his basement where they are still being kept. Unfortunately there is no opportunity to decipher the films as a special device able to decode such records was also utilized when the program ended.

The NASA official admits that the flights to the Moon were rather a political mission as the USA wanted to gain revenge after the Soviet spaceman Gagarin was the first to enter the space. And the USA spent $150 billion to start the lunar program to demonstrate the power of the American science and engineering. It was a very expensive project that was easily abandoned as soon as financing was stopped.

The American Internet service Google is ready to pay $20 million to a private company that succeeds in landing a buggy on the Moon for transmitting photo and video information of one gigabyte in size right to the Earth surface. The sum is to be paid in case a buggy lands the Moon before 2012, and a company may get just $15 million if it launches such a buggy within the two next years after 2012.

At that, Google conditions that such a buggy must walk at least 40 centimeters along the Moon surface, transmit a series of pictures from the Moon including ‘a self-portrait’ against the lunar background, a panoramic picture of the planet and on-line video.

As it turned out, meteorites hit the lunar surface oftener than is usually believed which is really dangerous for automatic stations and manned spaceships. The Moon has no atmospheric protection, and even a small meteor can cause a tragedy if it hits a spaceship or a manned space station.

Today, the Russian project of the Moon expedition is even less developed than it was under the direction of Korolev.

The documentary In the Shadow of the Moon includes an interview given by five of the eight extant men who had ever entered space. They are now aged over seventy. None of them has ever officially stated that he saw something supernatural in space. At that, they are unanimous that the lunar race was part of the cold war when pure science was of second importance.

Neil Armstrong, the first man to land the Moon, is now living an anchorite life in Ohayo where he teaches astronautics at the university.

NASA is going to conduct another mission to the Moon with a spaceship Orion resembling Apollo and stuffed with steroids. It is planned that four astronauts will fly round the Moon in 2018. If the project goes OK a landing module is to land the lunar surface in 2020.

Russia’s ambitions as concerning Moon exploration are rather modest. A Russian astronaut may land the planet only as a member of a Chinese-Russian expedition. Chinese researchers are working on this project and invite Russia to participate in it as well.

(Source: http://www.ourstrangeworld.net/?p=10635a)

3 Titans of Asia Face Off: Who Gets the Biggest Chunk of Moon?

Amid a renewed burst of global space agendas, Asian spacefarers are racing to the moon. It seems everyone wants to ensure their piece of the lunar pie. Asian giants Japan, China and India are engaging in a race to map lunar resources and put dibs on the moon as a platform to eventually explore the planets beyond.

Japan may have sparked the Asian lunar race on September 14 when it successfully launched its first lunar orbiter. China will now launch its own moon probe before the end of the year, followed by India in the first half of 2008.

JAXA, as the Japanese space agency is known, will carry out more robotic missions before sending their own astronauts to the moon, said agency president, Keiji Tachikawa, in a brief interview Monday.

Missions to the moon and to Mars and international cooperation topped the agenda of a five-day global conference held recently in Hyderabad, India that brought together 2,000 space professionals, including scientists, astronomers and astronauts.

“There is a great revival of interest in exploring various planets,” said Sun Laiyan, head of the China National Space Administration.

China’s Chang’e 1 lunar probe is being transported to the launch site and “if everything goes fine, will be launched by the end of the year,” said Sun, adding that China will be considering their own manned moon mission if all goes well.

India’s Chandrayaan 1 lunar probe will be launched in March or April 2008, said B.N. Suresh, director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram. Preparatory work is in “full swing” at the Sriharikota space station in southern India, where the craft is being assembled, the launch vehicle readied and antennae installed to receive data from the moon, Suresh revealed.

Also in 2008, India will likely choose the target year for a human spaceflight to the moon, confirmed G. Madhavan Nair, head of the Indian Space Research Organisation.

Although mankind has had more than four decades of lunar missions, space scientists are still lacking basic knowledge about the moon’s origin, the minerals it contains and even whether or not it holds water that could support human life.

“There is a lot more known about the moon, but even after the current round of lunar missions, you will still have more questions,” said Indian scientist U.R. Rao, who did pioneering work on space launch vehicles.

Mineral samples from the moon contained abundant quantities of helium 3, a variant of the gas used in lasers and refrigerators as well as to blow up balloons. Space experts believe it could offer a solution to the earth’s energy shortages.

Technology for converting helium 3 to energy is still largely unexplored, but spacefaring nations are already talking about a permanent human presence on the moon where resources can be identified and studied. Nations are also increasingly looking beyond lunar missions to Mars and other distant worlds.

NASA aims to put a man on Mars by 2037, Michael Griffin, the administrator of the US space agency, indicated earlier this week, saying the orbital international space station targeted for completion by 2010 would provide a “toehold in space” for travel first to the moon and then Mars.

Japan’s 55-billion-yen (478 million-dollar) Kaguya is the largest moon explorer since the US Apollo missions back in the 1970s after six human landings—the only time mankind visited another world. But the vision and purpose of space explorations has changed dramatically since then. Several renowned astrophycists have called on mankind to seriously consider colonizing space as a means of preventing extinction.

“The moon is no longer a place for us to visit,” said JAXA’s Tachikawa. “We should consider inhabiting and exploiting it.”

While many agree with Tachikawa, humanity is still a “couple of generations away” from tapping viable commercial opportunities in outer space, including the moon, believes Franco Bonacina, spokesman for the European Space Agency.

“But we need to go back to the moon to go even farther,” he said. “The moon is a harbor — a kind of spare wheel — from where we can push to Mars.”

In the scramble to reach the moon, spacefarers risk duplication of effort, pointed out Indian scientist Rao, who called for cooperation between the world’s space agencies to avoid that.

“Everyone doing the same work would be a waste of resources.”

Rao is right, but as recently highlighted by the Russian underwater Arctic flag-planting debacle, humans tend to want to get there first to stake things off and make a claim to the coveted land in question—be it on Earth or beyond.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

(Source: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/09/titans-of-asia-.html)

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon

This outstanding documentary is in 4 parts. I will upload the second part if the hits total more than 100. The reason I’m doing this is because my videos get lots of views but not everyone votes, some of my videos should have several hundred hits, guess people cannot be bothered to press the “hit” button. The more hits a video has the more chance it has of being featured, and seen by more people, thats the only reason we take the time to convert and upload these documentarys.

We believe everyone should be aware of whats going on. So if you have taken the time to watch our videos then please take the time to press “hit” or “miss”. Dont forget to suggest this video to your friends. Please also subscribe, we will return the compliment. Thanks.

Stephen Surrounding the earth, beginning at an altitude of 1,000 miles and extending an additional 25,000 miles, lie lethal bands of radiation called the Van Allen Radiation Belts. Every manned space mission in history (including Mercury, Gemini, Soyuz, Skylab and the Space Shuttle) has been well below this deadly radiation field… all except Apollo.

Recently uncovered footage of the crew of Apollo 11 staging part of their mission proves that the astronauts never made it beyond earth orbit. The goal was to fool the Soviet Union about US strategic capability during the height of the Cold War, Deceit, Greed and Injustice… A sad thing happened on the way to the moon. The truth will astound you!

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4