[GoblinGaga]

Space-age food served up with seeds of success
by Xin Dingding and Jin Zhu
Beijing (XNA) Sep 04, 2012

File image.


An eggplant the size of a basketball, and a cucumber half a meter long seem, at first glance, out of this world. They are, literally. Chinese scientists have created more than 120 varieties of plants by sending seeds into space over the past 25 years. The varieties are making their way to dining tables and even grabbing a market share in some areas, industry insiders said.

In Northwest China's Gansu province, "space peppers" account for more than half of the local capsicum market, said Li Qingsheng, director of the Lanzhou office of the Tianshui Shenzhou Lushui Agricultural Science and Technology Co, a seed firm in western China.

"These 'space peppers' are not sold with a label indicating their uniqueness, but they still sell well at a slightly higher price than conventional ones," Li said.

Farmers like to grow them because the particular type of pepper, the Hangjiao-5, grows faster, has a higher yield, and sells well, he said.

Consumers like its thicker flesh and it has fewer seeds, he said.

The planting area of the pepper, which used seeds developed from seeds taken into space during the 2002 Shenzhou III mission, has spread to five other provinces and regions, including the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and Yunnan and Qing-hai provinces.

Peppers are not the only beneficiaries. Eggplants, tomatoes and beans, helped by space technology, have also entered the market. But ensuring seeds can fully benefit from their time in space means a lot of work must take place on the ground.

"It's not like that after traveling in space for a few days, the seeds will turn out with all the desired traits we want," said Liu Min, a scientist who specializes in seed technology and is also a consultant to the China Academy of Space Technology.

Breeders spend years working in the farmland, nurturing and selecting the prime seeds and just being in space is no guarantee of success.

Liu's team sowed tomato seeds in 2005 presented by Russia as a gift. The results were mixed. They had been on the Mir space station for six years (1992-98). But the first seedlings produced both big and small tomatoes. Some did not even sprout.

They selected the good but unwanted traits continued to emerge in the second and third generations.

It was not until the fourth generation that the researchers were pretty sure that the traits were in the genes.

A new variety usually takes at least four years to create but it is still a "much faster" process than traditional breeding which can take a lifetime to make just a few new varieties, she said.

That is not fast enough as agriculture undergoes further modernization to feed a population of 1.3 billion, she said.

"More than half of all vegetable seeds bought by farmers in China are imported. The situation is pressing," she said.

Chinese scientists first sent crop seeds into space in a recoverable satellite in 1987.

Jiang Xingcun, a scientist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences who was in charge of the early experiments, found that the space environment - which apart from the lack of gravity also has a magnetic field and high energy cosmic radiation - can induce mutations in up to 12 percent of the seeds, hundreds of times the rate on Earth.

Scientists say the radiation and micro-gravity can cause natural changes to the seed. It does not involve any artificial genetic modification.

Radiation-induced mutation is an agreed safe way to breed new crop varieties, given the fact that it does not splice any foreign genes into the plants, Liu said.

A bigger percentage of mutations means breeders have a wider choice to find their desired traits.

But the program has met opposition.

Some agronomists questioned why China should experiment with space-induced mutation while the former Soviet Union and the United States have curtailed their programs.

But Liu pointed out that Russia has been using space mutation to improve crops, including cotton, wheat and firs that are used as Christmas trees.

US scientists have also used the method to improve roses so that more oil can be produced to make perfume, she said.

"It's just one kind of radiation-induced mutation, except the radiation source is the high-energy particles in space," she said.

Chinese breeders had used Cobalt-60, a radioactive isotope, to induce seed mutation on the ground. But Cobalt-60 is highly dangerous, and scientists must get permission to use it.

Thanks to China's progress in space, seeds of nearly 400 plant varieties have gone into space 23 times in recoverable satellites and in 10 missions of China's manned space program, according to media reports.

A news report by Nanfang Weekly in July said that there are at least 224 research teams in various scientific institutes in China, and at least 60 breeding bases have been established.

Scientists are trying to unravel the mystery of space-induced mutation.

Questions waiting to be answered include how exactly does space alter the genes.

Liu Luxiang, a leading expert in the field at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that only with the answers to those questions can scientists breed more crop varieties through simulated conditions in a shorter period.

That is "the ultimate goal" of China's space breeding project.

Liu Min said the country's future space station, which is scheduled to be assembled around 2020, will provide a platform to help scientists conduct experiments and discover the secrets of space-induced mutation.

Source: Source: Xinhua





http://www.space-travel.com/reports/...ccess_999.html

[pBiRXp8u]

China Focus: Timeline for China's space research revealed
by Xinhua writers Li Huizi and Nick Yates
Beijing (XNA) Sep 04, 2012

China plans to launch the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT), the country's first astronomy satellite, around 2015.


A senior Chinese astronomer on Friday revealed a timeline for China's planned program of space research. In an interview with Xinhua, Zhang Shuangnan, an astrophysicist at the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said key developments will include China launching its first space telescope around 2015 and the country's space station being completed around 2020.

Speaking at the sidelines of the 28th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union, being held in Beijing from Aug. 20-31, he said the space station will become a platform to study black holes, dark matter and dark energy.

With the accelerating pace of China's manned space program, time is on the side of the country's space astronomers (who conduct studies from spacecraft, as opposed to land-based astronomers), who are planning to put telescopes and other astronomical experiment in space, as a complement to large telescopes on Earth.

Under a national plan, China plans to launch the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT), the country's first astronomy satellite, around 2015. Already 20 years in development, it will observe black holes, neutron stars and other phenomena based on their X-ray and gamma ray emissions, according to Zhang, the HXMT project's leader.

The astronomer added that China plans to launch its Tiangong-2 space lab in 2014, aboard which there will be a Sino-Switzerland experiment, called "POLAR," a gamma ray burst detector.

The first such experiment on the international stage, it is part of China's Black Hole Probe Program to gain understanding of the physics of extreme conditions, Zhang explained.

Tiangong space labs have become a fundamental part of China's space station. Tiangong-1 was launched into space last September, and it docked with the Shenzhou-8 and -9 spacecraft in November 2011 and June 2012, respectively, paving the way for assembling a space station and ferrying supplies and equipment to the new facility.

The orbiting Tiangong-1 module was mainly used for testing docking procedures, without any astrophysical experiments on board. But space astronomers are seeking opportunities to assemble scientific payloads for the Tiangong-2 and -3 modules to be launched in the next three years.

They are designing astronomy experiments for the space station such as a Dark Matter Detection Program, designed to identify much-hypothesized matter that can't be seen directly with telescopes.

The installation and maintenance of space telescopes will need the assistance of astronauts, Zhang said, as has been required for the Hubble Space Telescope.

Astronomical experiments that have been approved to be part of the payloads of the space station include the Cosmic Lighthouse Program to study basic scientific questions such as the origin of the universe and stars, according to Zhang.

Also among the plans is the Portraits of Astrophysical Objects Program, intended to obtain pictures of extrasolar galaxies such as black holes, by using Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) - observations based on the use of multiple telescopes.

"It's a pity that as a country mastering space technologies, China has not launched any astronomy satellites yet," Zhang said, adding that its only astronomical experiment conducted in space was one testing gamma rays in the Shenzhou-2 spacecraft launched in 2001.

The astronomical satellites, as well as China's space astronomical plans, will offer large quantities of important data for astrophysical studies in a few years and elevate the country's scientific credentials to international frontiers, Zhang predicted.

According to a report of the Paris-headquartered Committee on Space Research, most orbiting or to-be-launched space observational facilities will terminate between 2018 and 2020, and there are few space astronomical projects being approved at present around the world.

This situation creates "both an opportunity and challenge for China's astronomical development," Zhang said.

Source: Source: Xinhua





http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Ch...ealed_999.html

[duncanalisstmp]

Tiangong Orbit Change Signals Likely Date for Shenzhou 10
by Robert Christy FBIS
Scarborough, UK (SPX) Sep 04, 2012

File image.


August 30, Tiangong 1's controllers raised its orbit by 11 kilometres, indicating that a target date for the Shenzhou 10 mission has probably been set. As August 30 dawned, Tiangong 1 was following a 344 x 356 kilometre orbit at 42.8 degrees inclination. Soon after noon UTC, a firing of its thrusters raised perigee to create a new apogee. The orbit became 355 x 366 kilometres at the same inclination as before.

It was back to the same height that had been produced by a similar manoeuvre after Shenzhou 9 departed. A history of Tiangong's orbital manoeuvres can be seen here.

Before this latest adustment, Tiangong's orbit decay would have brought it back to the 330 kilometer Shenzhou operating altitude before the end of 2012. Controllers had been experimenting for a few weeks with thruster firings to control Tiangong's rate of decay very precisely.

It seemed to be heading for a rendezvous with Shenzhou 10 around November 26 during one of two launch windows covering the last few days of November and the first couple of weeks in December.

It was probably a 'holding pattern' based on an estimate of how long it would take to review Shenzhou 9 and prepare a new vehicle for launch with a crew.

Plans may now have firmed up a little with an aim to fly the mission early in the new year. Tiangong 1's new orbit will decay to Shenzhou altitude early February, during the next pair of launch windows that extend through January to mid-February. A current estimate of the likely Shenzhou launch date can be found here.

Shenzhou 10's mission is unlikely exceed Shenzhou 9's by anything significant in duration.

Where Shenzhou 9 was used to test and develop the logistics and mechanics of getting a crew aboard a space station, the next flight has the aim of introducing operational routines and simulating space station life.

It is set to be the final mission to Tiangong 1 which will reach the end of its two year rated lifetime next October.

It's docking unit is rated for use on six occasions, and four of them have already passed with two dockings each by Shenzhou 8 and Shenzhou 9.

Tiangong 1 will then steer itself to a safe re-entry and China will turn its attention to Tiangong 2. The new laboratory will be used to build more experience of space station operation so China is ready for the challenge of operating the 20-tonne core module of a more-permanent outpost towards the end of the decade.

Robert Christy has been analysing and documenting space events since the early 1960s and currently provides informtion via his web site





http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Ti...ou_10_999.html