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Category: Space

Lots of Concern This Weekend That Debris From an Out of Control Chinese Rocket Was Going to Land in Africa

There was palpable anxiety across a number of African countries this weekend that pieces of a Chinese rocket that hurtled back to earth were going to land somewhere in their countries. Newspapers in Ghana, Nigeria and Namibia, among others, fretted about the prospect of falling rocket shrapnel. ...

UAE PM Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Tweets in Chinese to Congratulate Xi Jinping on Mars Mission

It's rare for the head of a foreign state to tweet in Chinese, but today the UAE's Sheikh Mohammed congratulated China, and President Xi Jinping specifically, on the Tianwen-1 spacecraft joining the Emirates' own Hope Probe in its orbit around Mars. ...

China’s Space Program Becomes New Soft Power Message in Africa

China's Ambassador to Botswana Zhao Yanbo was among a number of Chinese envoys and embassies who celebrated this week's launch of the Long March-3B rocket, which carried the new Beidou Navigation Satellite System into orbit. The new nav system presents an immediate challenge to the U.S.-led Global ...

AFP Fact Check: China NOT Ethiopia Launched the Ethiopian Satellite Last Month

The French news agency AFP published a fact check on Monday about doctored photos of last month's launch of the Ethiopian satellite from the Taiyuan launch facility in China.  The Ethiopian satellite blasted off in a Long March 4B rocket, not the Long March 5 or Changzheng 5 that ...

Ethiopia’s New Chinese-built Satellite Sends Back First Images

Three weeks after it blasted off from a launchpad in China, Ethiopia's new satellite sent back its first test images Monday. These initial photos were taken over China but officials say the next batch of photos will be done over Ethiopian territory.

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

Which Way is West?

One of the fun aspects of the China-Africa Project is that we don’t always agree. The work of pulling in different perspectives means that how we see reality is itself a negotiation, drawing on our different backgrounds. For example, one of the issues where Eric and I diverge is on whether the concept of The West makes any sense.

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