{"id":22425,"date":"2024-04-13T11:46:22","date_gmt":"2024-04-13T06:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=22425"},"modified":"2025-10-11T11:31:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T06:01:13","slug":"queqiao-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/queqiao-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Queqiao-2?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About Queqiao-2<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Queqiao-2 (<strong>Magpie Bridge 2<\/strong>) is a <strong>relay satellite<\/strong> launched by <strong>China<\/strong> to serve as a <strong>communications bridge between<\/strong> ground operations on <strong>earth and upcoming lunar probe missions on the far side of the moon<\/strong> until at least 2030.<\/li>\n<li>It has a mass of 1,200 kilograms and carries a large, <strong>4.2-meter-diameter<\/strong> (13.8-foot) <strong>parabolic antenna<\/strong> that will be deployed once in space and is <strong>oneof the largest sentbeyond Earth orbit.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Queqiao-2\u2019s first task will be <strong>supporting China\u2019sChang\u2019e-6 <\/strong>lunar far-side sample return mission. It will further <strong>support the future Chang&#8217;e-7 and -8 lunar missions<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Queqiao 2 <strong>carries three science payloads<\/strong>: an Extreme Ultraviolet Camera (EUC), a Grid-based Energetic Neutral Atom Imager (GENA), and a very long baseline interferometer, the Lunar Orbit VLBI EXperiment (LOVEX).<\/li>\n<li>It has a planned <strong>lifetime of over 8 years<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>The mission will <strong>also be deploying two experimental CubeSats<\/strong>, T<strong>iandu-1 and Tiandu-2, <\/strong>which will <strong>orbit the Moon<\/strong> to <strong>test navigationand communication technologies<\/strong>.\n<ul>\n<li>Tiandu-1 has a Ka-band communications system and a laser retroreflector. It has a mass of 61 kg.<\/li>\n<li>Tiandu-2, the smaller of the two cubesats with a mass of 15 kg, also has a communications system.<\/li>\n<li>The two satellites will be in formation in an elliptical lunar orbit. Navigation tests include laser ranging to the Moon, and microwave ranging between <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/upsc-exam\/types-of-satellite\/\" target=\"_blank\">satellites<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1: What are CubeSats?<\/h3>\n<p>A CubeSat is a square-shaped miniature satellite (10 cm \u00d7 10 cm \u00d7 10 cm\u2014roughly the size of a Rubik&#8217;s cube), weighing about 1 kg. A CubeSat can be used alone (1 unit) or in groups of multiple units (maximum 24 units).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/economictimes.indiatimes.com\/news\/international\/world-news\/china-launch-of-relay-satellite-queqiao-2-for-lunar-probe-mission-successful\/articleshow\/109235586.cms?from=mdr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>China launch of relay satellite Queqiao-2 for lunar probe mission successful\u00a0<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Queqiao-2 (Magpie Bridge 2) is a relay satellite launched by China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":22426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22425","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}