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Milestones are coming fast and furiously for the Chinese space program.
Successful Chang’e 5 robotic mission returned samples of the pristine moon to Earth in mid-December, which had not been done since 1976. The first fully local Mars mission to China, Tianwen-1, is expected to arrive at the red planet on February 10. And soon after, the nation plans to begin assembling its space station in Earth orbit.
“The tests are in their final stages. We will start the key technology test and construction of the Chinese space station next spring,” Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China’s human spaceflight program, said last month. according to the South China Morning Post.
Related: China selects 18 astronauts for space station launch
The equipment expected to take off in a few months is the station’s central module, known as the Tianhe (“Joining of the Heavens”), which will provide living space and vital support to the astronauts and house the elements of power and propulsion of the outpost.
Tianhe, which is 18 meters long and weighs around 24 tons (22 tons), will launch a Long March 5B rocket atop from the Wenchang satellite launch center on Hainan Island.
The launch of Tianhe will be followed in relatively quick succession by many others. A total of 11 takeoffs will be needed to build the space station, which China wants to complete by the end of 2022, the South China Morning Post reported.
The completed complex is expected to be approximately 20% as massive as the International space station, which is managed by a 15-country partnership that does not include China. If so, China’s outpost will be roughly the same size as Russia’s old one. Mir space station, which was intentionally desorbed in 2001.
China has been preparing for the launch of Tianhe for years. The nation has launched a prototype station module called Tiangong-1 in 2011 and another, Tiangong-2, in 2016. Chinese astronauts visited these two space laboratories aboard the Shenzhou spacecraft. And in 2017, the robotic cargo ship Tianzhou-1 visited Tiangong-2, demonstrating autonomous docking and refueling operations several times during its mission.
Tiangong-2 was successfully desorbed in July 2019. Tiangong-1 also burned in the Earth’s atmosphere, but its demise was not so clean; he descended uncontrollably over the southern Pacific Ocean in April 2018.
Mike Wall is the author of “Over there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book on the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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