Yikes! And in other disaster news, the European Space Agency revealed that a catastrophe of Hollywood summer blockbuster proportions was averted in October, when the German satellite ROSAT could have potentially landed in Beijing on its re-entry. more ›

Two interesting soundbytes from US presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich from the GOP debate in Florida Thursday night: more ›

more ›

"I’m not sharing something I shouldn’t, but China has blinded United States satellites with their lasers." more ›

China took one step closer to a future space station last night, with the successful launch of their Tiangong-1 space lab module. The most exciting (and brow-raising) bit about CCTV's (rather drab) coverage last night was their strange CGI rendition in which America, the Beautiful was used as their space launch music (see video on right)! Back in 1970 when China's first rocket was launched, notes The Guardian, the music of choice was the Cultural Revolution song The East is Red. How far we've come since then!!! more ›

• Evan Osnos of The New Yorker uses his crumbling 4-year-old Beijing hutong home as a metaphor for some possible liabilities surrounding China's breakneck development.
• Malcome Moore of the Daily Telegraph gives us the blow by blow account of a town in China first made filthy rich, then totally ruined by a pyramid scheme.
• China Digital Times takes a look at US China Ambassador Gary Locke's unexpected and immediate rise to stardom in China, and some not-so-friendly editorials in Chinese State Media that have come out as a result.

The next time you sit down for some good old mi fan, see if you can catch a hint of the hidden flavor that's long been lurking inside those beautiful puffy white pods -- the taste of SPACE. more ›

Well this certainly won't help calm all the rampant 2012 doomsday speculation. Chinese scientists at Beijing's Tsinghua University have decided it's just too difficult to do research on asteroids out in the solar system and instead want to bring one into Earth's orbit by altering the asteroid's trajectory. more ›

You better hurry though, time's running out. We had already told you about China's ambitious plans for their space program, but those plans were officially confirmed by Chinese officials at the international robotics conference in Shanghai this week. more ›

Who would've thought that there might be something the Chinese might want to outsource to the U.S.? Chinese space agency officials have allegedly told Aviation Week that its hard to believe the launch prices offered by California-based, Google founder-founded Space Exploration Technologies Inc. (SpaceX). Apparently, "they find the published prices on the SpaceX website very low for the services offered, and concede they could not match them with the Long March series of launch vehicles even if it were possible for them to launch satellites with U.S. components in them." more ›

Yongjia Internet Technique Co Ltd is currently exploring the possibility of offering 'space burial' services from China, whereby they cram your remains into a lipstick-sized tube, attach you to a rocket, and blast you into space. You then orbit for a while (depending on how much you pay, of course) as another piece of China's space junk, and eventually burn up. Sounds like a business almost as wasteful as it is useless. But then again, rich people who decide they want to shoot their ashes into outer space aren't exactly doing it to save the planet. They're probably doing it because, well, it sounds AWESOME. more ›

More exciting, semi-non-news documents released by Wikileaks have revealed that China and the US, in a "mutual show of military strength" used missiles to blow up their own satellites! Actually the blowing shit up part isn't news, that happened two or three years ago, well covered by the press. But WHY they both blew up their respective satellites has been more clearly revealed: basically, it's Regan's 'Star Wars' all over again! more ›

Has this been a crazy year for UFOs, or what? New reports say we can add one more sighting to an ever growing list: an airport near Baotou, Inner Mongolia was forced to shut down on September 11th for passenger jets to prevent them from crashing into a "UFO." more ›

Just in time for World Space Week (what, you didn’t know?), China has started launching things skyward left and right. Closely following Change'e 2’s launch last Friday, the Chinese now plan to send up two satellites to probe the ‘space environment’, whatever that means. more ›

At least that's what we got from the breathy announcements of China's space program over the weekend. Not only does it plan on being the second country ever to do a manned moon landing, it also wants to launch a space station, lab and probes to explore Mars and Venus. more ›

What's with all the UFOs these days? It's been less than two months since a UFO (still unidentified) was spotted in Hangzhou, and now another one has appeared in Zhejiang province. A bright object was visible for at least three hours over the skies of Haiyan County. more ›

Adding yet another superlative to its ever growing "World's leading" list, China has now been declared the world's leading "space polluter." more ›

How disappointing! To be honest, one of the pavilions I was looking forward to before the Expo opened was the Space Pavilion. Sure, the description on the Expo website was a little vague - I had no idea what "The Origin of Dreams" was supposed to convey - but there was going to be a "Spacewalk" they promised. I figured, with the many strides the space industry has made in China over the past few years, they'd have something pretty awesome to show. Unfortunately, the two pieces of news I've seen about the pavilion have managed to dash my hopes. more ›

• Haha, look - it's an Obama egg, made by egg artist Kang Yongguo in Liaoning Province. [Obamafoodorama]
• Tao Weishuo (陶韡烁) defends a statement he made: "I strongly disagree with what Obama said about the Internet firewall... I think all Chinese people have Internet freedom - we can speak out freely on the Internet about current social affairs", which generated a wave of criticism from netizens. [China Digital Times]
• Gosh there's a lot of green news coming out of China. Here's a summary of some of the biggest things to hit the wire and what they might mean. [NY Times]

Scientists at the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing supposedly caught footage of a UFO in the sky during July's solar eclipse. A UFO and an eclipse in the same day? What luck! more ›

• HTC Releasing Three Android Phones In China [InformationWeek] "The company will have to remove Google Maps and tailor the operating system on the Hero, Magic, and Click to gain Chinese government approval. HTC will be bringing out three custom-tailored Android handsets for China by the end of the year, the smartphone maker said."
• Official says China's jobless situation 'very grave' despite improving economy [Los Angeles Times] "China's jobless situation is "very grave," with millions out of work due to the global crisis and the threat that unemployment might rise despite recent improvements in the economy, the government said Tuesday. Beijing is trying to create jobs for laid-off workers, new college graduates, migrants and others, said Wang Yadong, deputy director of job promotion at the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security."
• Bret Stephens: China’s Pollution Problems Are a Result of Government Economic Control [WSJ] "A funny thing happened on the way to saving the world’s poor from the ravages of global warming. The poor told the warming alarmists to get lost. This spring, the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, led by former U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan, issued a report warning that “mass starvation, mass migration, and mass sickness” would ensue if the world did not agree to “the most ambitious international agreement ever negotiated” on global warming at a forthcoming conference in Copenhagen. But never mind about that. The more interesting kiss-off took place in New Delhi late last month, when Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told visiting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that there was no way India would sign on to any global scheme to cap carbon emissions."

A few instant gems from the clip:

"This is a testament to the progress of the Chinese people. Today we sent a man into space fully conscious, and without shackles." more ›

58 years after Chairman Mao lamented in 1950 that China couldn't even put a potato in space, Chinese astronaut Zhai Zhigang, 41, has successfully completed China's first spacewalk. Blogging for China offers an English translation of the dialogue that went on between the astronauts and the mission control back in Beijing, including the tense moment when they thought the orbital module had caught on fire. Shenzhou 7 has since landed safely back in Inner Mongolia and the next goal now is to build a space station by 2020. more ›

This is just such a classic you'll have to read the entire AP story for yourself:

A news story describing a successful launch of China's long-awaited space mission and including detailed dialogue between astronauts launched on the Internet Thursday, hours before the rocket had even left the ground. more ›