Space News reported (September 11) Xing He, Executive Vice President of the China Great Wall Industry Corp., a subsidiary of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. as saying at the World Satellite Business Week conference (September 10) that China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. is likely to resume flights of its heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket this year. He said “The exact cause of the failure has been pinpointed” adding that a launch date has not been selected but will “probably be in this year.”  The second launch of China’s Long March 5 carrying Shijan-18, an experimental communications satellite, failed in July 2017.  China’s State Administrator for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense attributed the failure to a turbopump in one of the YF-77 first-stage engines. If China does conduct a Long March 5 launch in 2019, it likely will be late in the year. First the rocket would travel to the launch site via cargo ships, a process that takes roughly two weeks. During the two previous Long March 5 missions, preparations at the launch site took another couple months.

(Comment: China’s space industry has conducted 13 launches in 2019, compared with a record-setting 38 launches in 2018.) 

CHINA-S&T: CHINA DEVELOPS WORLD'S FIRST PROTOTYPE OF A SUPERCONDUCTING HYBRID POWER LINE 

South China Morning Post reported (August 29) that Chinese scientists of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Electrical Engineering in Beijing have developed the world’s first prototype of a superconducting hybrid power line, paving the way for construction of a 2,000km (1,243-mile) line from energy-rich Xinjiang in the country’s far west to its eastern provinces. The 10-metre, proof-of-concept wire and liquid natural gas hybrid transmission line was up and running at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Electrical Engineering in Beijing last month to show the feasibility of the technology. The line contains a superconducting wire which can transmit nearly 1,000 amps of electric current at more than 18,000 volts with zero resistance. In a further difference from a traditional power line, the gap between the superconducting wire and the power line’s outer shell is filled by a flow of slowly moving natural gas liquefied at low temperatures – between minus 183 and minus 173 degrees Celsius (minus 279 to minus 297 Fahrenheit). This allows the line to transfer electricity and fossil fuel at the same time.