Places · Landing site
Dongfeng landing site
Shenzhou capsules now return to this desert site next to Jiuquan rather than the grassland further east — the ground is flatter and the weather is more predictable. Position approximate.
- Where
- Inner Mongolia, China
- Coordinates
- 41.38°N 100.37°E
- Since
- 2021
- On the map
- Show me
- More
- cmse.gov.cn
The sky from here
This is a zone 2 sky — rural on the nine-grade scale, Bortle 2–3, reaching roughly magnitude 6.7–7.5 unaided. The Milky Way is structured and obvious. Light domes sit low on the horizon over distant towns, and the rest of the sky is genuinely dark.
That grade puts 107 of the catalogue within easy reach of 10×50 binoculars and 107 within a 130mm — 44 of them need no instrument at all. There is nowhere darker worth driving to; this is already among the better skies on the planet.
There is no season here in which the sky fails to get properly dark — the Sun clears eighteen degrees below the horizon on all 365 nights.
The centre of the galaxy only ever reaches 20° above the horizon from here, so the richest part of the Milky Way is always seen through the thickest air. It is the single biggest difference between this sky and one further south. Of the 110 Messier objects, 11 never set from here and every one of them rises at some point in the year.
Of everything in the catalogue, Andromeda Galaxy, Cat's Eye Galaxy and Sunflower Galaxy are the best served here, climbing to within a few degrees of straight up — an object at the zenith is being seen through the least air it will ever be seen through, and the difference against the same object low in the south is not subtle.
Little Dumbbell, Pinwheel Galaxy and Owl Nebula never set from this latitude, so they are available on any clear night of the year rather than for one season of it.
Read at 41.38°N 100.37°E. Darkness is estimated rather than measured; everything else follows from the latitude and holds along the whole parallel. How accurate this is.
Nearby
Questions
What part of the sky never rises at Dongfeng landing site?
Everything south of declination −49°. From 41.4°N that is a cap 41° in radius centred on the south celestial pole, which is 12% of the whole celestial sphere. That part of the sky is not merely a winter object or a difficult one; it is geometrically unavailable from this latitude. The equivalent cap around the north celestial pole is the compensation, and it never sets.
How many hours of true darkness does Dongfeng landing site get?
11 hours 29 minutes on the best night, around 21 December, falling to 4 hours 31 minutes around 21 June. That counts only proper astronomical night, with the Sun eighteen degrees down; the merely-dark hours either side of it are longer. Every night of the year gets there eventually, which is the quiet advantage of not being any further from the equator than this.
What has to be in orbit to come down at Dongfeng landing site?
Something inclined at least 41.4°. A spacecraft's ground track only reaches as far from the equator as its own orbital inclination, so nothing in a shallower orbit than 41.4°N ever passes over this spot, and nothing in one can be brought down here without changing planes first. At exactly 41.4° the site sits at the turning point of the track and gets a single narrow opportunity; well above it the track crosses this latitude twice an orbit and the windows come round often.
How far is Dongfeng landing site from the other sites on this map?
Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center is the nearest thing to it here — 47 km to the south. The nearest other landing site is Soyuz recovery area, 2,660 km to the north-west. Measured as the great circle between coordinates, which is the shortest path across the surface and rarely the one you could travel.