Tiangong is one of the crown jewels in Beijing’s well-funded program, which has landed robotic rovers on Mars and the moon, and made the country the third to put humans into orbit, as it seeks to catch up with primary powers such as the United States. and Russia
China has been excluded from the International Space Station (ISS) since 2011, when Washington banned NASA from being with Beijing.
The final touch of Tiangong would mean that “China is now an equivalent player in the area with the United States, Russia and Europe,” analyst Chen Lan told AFP.
“Scientifically and commercially, it’s smart to see new players coming in. . . Competition will drive innovation,” he added.
The lab module, called Mengtian, or “dreaming of the sky,” was introduced on a Long March 5B rocket from the Wenchang launch center on China’s tropical island of Hainan, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Amateur and enthusiastic photographers watched the launch, which took position at 15:27 local time (07:27 GMT), from a nearby beach.
About 10 minutes later, the event was declared a “total success” by launch site commander Deng Hongqin.
About thirteen hours later, in the early hours of Tuesday Beijing time, Mengtian docked with the Tianhe Core Module, news firm Xinhua reported, bringing up China’s Manned Space Agency.
Cold atomic clocks
For the past two years, China effectively sent the core module, 3 manned spacecraft, the Wentian laboratory module, and several shipping spacecraft to build Tiangong.
Mengtian is the third and final major component of the T-shaped space station, measuring about 60 feet (18 meters) long and weighing 50,700 pounds (23 metric tons).
It carries clinical apparatus that will be used in microgravity and will conduct experiments in fluid physics, tissue science, combustion science and basic physics, the area firm said.
It carries “the world’s first space-based cold atom clock system,” Xinhua reported.
“If successful, bloodless atomic clocks will shape the formula for maximum precision frequency and time in space, which is expected to lose a moment in a lot of millions of years,” said Zhang Wei, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The three-member team of the Shenzhou-14 mission, which recently lives on the station, will join through three other astronauts to Tiangong’s full structure until the end of this year, according to the agency.
When completed, the Tiangong-area station is expected to have a mass of 90 tons, or about a quarter of the ISS, or a length of the Soviet-built Mir station that orbited Earth from the 1980s to 2001.
Tiangong, whose “heavenly palace,” will operate for about a decade and will host a variety of near-zero weightlessness experiences.
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