2058

Tianwen-5 arrives at Neptune

Tianwen-5 is the fifth in a long-running series of space probes developed by China's national space agency. It follows the earlier Tianwen-4, which studied Jupiter and its moons in the late 2030s, prior to a flyby of Uranus in 2045.

Tianwen-5 is a mission to Neptune, the eighth and farthest known planet of our Solar System, 4.5 billion km (2.8 billion mi) from the Sun. This involves a journey of 18 years, launching in 2040 and arriving in 2058.* The spacecraft is an orbiter, as opposed to merely a flyby. As such, the mission can perform detailed studies of the ice giant and its moons for an extended period.

The probe is equipped with an aerostat, which is deployed separately from the main spacecraft, descending through the planet's upper atmosphere and returning a treasure trove of scientific data and imagery. Lacking a "surface", Neptune is composed primarily of gases and liquids, and has temperatures at its cloud tops approaching 55 K (−218 °C; −361 °F). In addition to extreme cold, some of the strongest winds in the Solar System are present here, reaching speeds of up to 2,100 km/h (1,300 mph).

The aerostat has been engineered to withstand these harsh conditions, with new materials and structural features to maximise its lifespan. Due to significant communication delays (over four hours one-way at the speed of light), a high degree of autonomy is also included, allowing the mission to perform tasks and make decisions without real-time input from Earth.

Tianwen-5 serves as a flagship mission for the China National Space Administration (CNSA), clearly showing that its capabilities in deep space exploration now match those of NASA.

The Beatles' music catalogue enters the public domain

Copyright law has remained largely unchanged since 2019. Accordingly, the Beatles' songs from 1962 are entered into the public domain, 96 years after the band's first single.*

A radio telescope is built on the Moon*

By 2058, a radio telescope measuring hundreds of metres wide is being developed on the Moon's far side. This provides a stable platform with slow rotation rate (0.5 arcsec/sec), beyond the interference of Earth's atmosphere and cluttered radio background. It can produce astronomical images with a clarity unmatched by any observatory on Earth or in space. Individual stars, billions of light years away, can be seen assembling into the first galaxies. The telescope is situated within an impact crater. Both it and the surrounding infrastructure are built using material gathered from the Moon itself – drastically reducing costs.*

Credit: NASA

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References

1 China's plans for outer Solar System exploration, The Planetary Society:
https://www.planetary.org/articles/chinas-plans-for-outer-solar-system-exploration
Accessed 18th April 2024.

2 Love Me Do, Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Me_Do
Accessed 17th May 2012.

3 50 Years in Space: NASA's Roadmap to 2058, Space.com:
http://www.space.com/news/081001-nasa50-road-ahead.html
Accessed 13th May 2010.

4 NASA Envisions Huge Lunar Telescope, Space.com:
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/080716-tw-lunar-telescope.html
Accessed 13th May 2010.

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