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China has confirmed the loss of its Shiyan-10 satellite, despite an otherwise successful liftoff on Monday (Sept. 27). The Shiyan-10 satellite launched to space on a Long March 3B rocket, which lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China around 4:20 a.m. EDT (0820 GMT; 4 p.m. local time) on Monday (Sept. 27). The spacecraft was China's second orbital launch of the day, following the Jilin-1 Gaofen 02D satellite, which was carried by a Kuaizhou-1A rocket that lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 2:19 a.m. EDT (0619 GMT; 2:19 p.m. local...

Oh great! This week I’ve got something real to whine about. It appears that the out-of-control-crashing-Chinese-satellite, Tiangong-1, is going to make reentry on Easter and there is nowhere I can go to escape it. The map below shows the relative probabilities of debris landing within a given region. Yellow indicates locations that have a higher probability while green indicates areas of lower probability. Blue areas have zero probability of debris reentry since Tiangong-1 does not fly over these areas (north of 42.7° N latitude or south of 42.7° S latitude). These zero probability areas constitute about a third of the...

On the heels of a new presidential resolution for US government agencies to avoid Chinese IT hardware over security concerns, the Pentagon has sparked outcry by disclosing its lease of bandwidth from a Chinese satellite. According to Pentagon spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Monica Matoush, the US Africa Command has decided to lease space on the Apstar-7 satellite, which is majority operated by China’s state-owned Aerospace Science & Technology Corp via Hong Kong-based APT Satellite Holdings. The military contract has been active since 2012, when Department of Defense contractor Harris CapRock Communications arranged the $10.6 million one-year lease. That agreement is set...