Chineese Space station to be ready next year

 

China is one of the countries that started its space mission very late. It was only in 2003, they sent their first astronaut into orbit (Yang Liwei). This mission made China the third country to independently send humans to space other than the US and Soviet Union.

China recently launched its first module for constructing a space station moving around the Earth at an altitude of 340-450km. Now we have only one space station, the International Space station (ISS)orbiting earth and this ISS is a collaboration between Russia, the US, Canada, Europe, and Japan. China has been blocked from participating in it. The first country to build a space station was USSR in the year 1971 and was in orbit for 6 months.

So far, China has sent two previous space stations into orbit. The Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2 were trial stations though, simple modules that allowed only relatively short stays by astronauts.

The new space station that China is planning to install is a 66-ton one which will last for 10 years orbiting the earth. The Tianhe module which was launched last week from Wenchang Space Launch Centre on a Long March-5B rocket is the core component of the station. This 16.6m wide and 4.2m wide provides the power and propulsion and also contains the life support technologies and living quarters required by visiting astronauts. China plans to complete this mission by next year through 10 more similar launches carrying all the additional equipment into orbit.

After the ISS decommissions in 2024, Tiangong will be the only space station orbiting the Earth and all the countries including India will have to depend on them to send our Gaganauts into space.