At 22.5 tonnes, the Tianhe capsule is the biggest and heaviest spacecraft China has ever constructed. Containing life support and control systems, this core will be the station’s living quarters. The core capsule, named Tianhe ( Harmony of Heavens), is about the size of a bus. When complete, Tiangong will consist of a core module attached to two laboratories with a combined weight of nearly 70 tonnes.
It will be built on a modular design, similar to the International Space Station operated by the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency. Tiangong is the successor to China’s Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2 space laboratories, launched in 20, respectively. China’s first Mars mission was in 2020, half a century after the US Mariner 9 probe flew past the red planet.īut the rising Asian superpower is catching up fast: flying missions to the Moon and Mars launching heavy-lift rockets building a new space telescope set to fly in 2024 and, most recently, putting the first piece of the Tiangong space station (the name means Heavenly Palace) into orbit. The country only launched its first crewed flight in 2003, more than 40 years after the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. China’s space program is making impressive progress.
0 kommentar(er)
