Final module docks at China’s Tiangong space station

The ultimate module of China’s Tiangong space station efficiently docked with the core construction on Tuesday, state media mentioned—a key step in its completion by yr’s finish and a landmark second within the nation’s space ambitions.

Tiangong is likely one of the crown jewels in Beijing’s well-funded programme—which has landed robotic rovers on Mars and the Moon, and made the nation solely the third to place people in orbit—because it appears to meet up with main spacefaring powers like the US and Russia.

China has been excluded from the Worldwide Area Station (ISS) since 2011, when Washington banned NASA from participating with Beijing.

Tiangong’s completion would sign “China is now an equal participant in space with the US, Russia and Europe”, analyst Chen Lan advised AFP.

“When it comes to scientific and industrial points, it’s at all times good to see new gamers coming…. Competitors will at all times pace up innovation,” he added.

The lab module, named Mengtian—or “dreaming of the heavens”—was launched on a Lengthy March 5B rocket from the Wenchang launch centre on China’s tropical island Hainan, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Novice photographers and space fanatics watched the launch, which occurred at 3:27 pm native time (0727 GMT), from a close-by seashore.

About 10 minutes in, the occasion was declared a “full success” by launch website commander Deng Hongqin.

Roughly 13 hours later, within the early hours of Tuesday Beijing time, Mengtian docked with the Tianhe core module, Xinhua information company mentioned, citing the China Manned Area Company.

Chilly atomic clocks

Over the previous two years, China has efficiently despatched up the core module, three manned spacecraft, the Wentian lab module and a number of other cargo spacecraft to construct Tiangong.

Mengtian is the third and last main element of the T-shaped space station, and is nearly 18 metres (60 ft) lengthy, weighing 23 metric tonnes (50,700 kilos).

It carries scientific tools that shall be used to check microgravity and perform experiments in fluid physics, materials science, combustion science and basic physics, the space company mentioned.

Additionally it is carrying “the world’s first space-based chilly atomic clock system”, Xinhua reported.

“If profitable, the chilly atomic clocks will type essentially the most exact time and frequency system in space, which shouldn’t lose one second in tons of of hundreds of thousands of years,” mentioned Zhang Wei, a researcher on the Chinese language Academy of Sciences.

The three-member crew of the Shenzhou-14 mission, who’re at the moment residing within the space station, shall be joined by three extra astronauts to finish building of Tiangong by the top of this yr, in response to the space agency.

As soon as accomplished, the Tiangong space station is predicted to have a mass of 90 tonnes—round 1 / 4 of the ISS—or related in dimension to the Soviet-built Mir station that orbited Earth from the Eighties till 2001.

Tiangong, which implies “heavenly palace”, will function for round a decade and host quite a lot of experiments in near-zero gravity.

Subsequent yr, Beijing plans to launch the Xuntian space telescope with a discipline of view 350 occasions that of NASA’s Hubble Area Telescope.

© 2022 AFP