BEIJING (AP) — China introduced the third and final module on its entire permanent space station on Monday, a more than decade-long effort to achieve a steady manned presence in orbit.
Mengtian entered the area at 3:39 p. m. local time (3:39 a. m. ). m. EDT) on Monday from the Wenchang Coastal Satellite Launch Center in the province of the southern tropical island of Hainan.
A giant crowd of amateur photographers, area enthusiasts and onlookers watched the takeoff from a nearby beach.
Many waved Chinese flags and wore T-shirts emblazoned with Chinese characters, reflecting the deep national pride invested in the program and the technological advancement it represents.
Mengtian, or “Heavenly Dream,” joins Wentian as the station’s moment lab module, collectively known as Tiangong, or “Heavenly Palace. “Both are connected to the central module of Tianhe where the team lives and works.
Like its predecessors, Mengtian was introduced aboard a Long March-5B Y4 carrier rocket, a member of China’s toughest launch vehicle family since Hainan.
Mengtian plans to spend thirteen hours on the flight before arriving in Tiangong, which is populated by a team of two men and one female astronauts, according to China’s Manned Space Agency.
Chen Dong, Cai Xuzhe and Liu Yang arrived in early June for a six-month stay, in which they will complete the station meeting, conduct spacewalks, and conduct further experiments.
After Mengtian’s arrival, another unmanned Tianzhou freighter is scheduled to dock at the station next month with a manned project scheduled for December, when crews may overlap: Tiangong has room to accommodate six astronauts.
Mengtian weighs about 20 tons and is 58. 7 feet long, with a diameter of 13. 8 feet. It will provide an area for weightless experiments, an airlock for vacuum exposure of the area, and a small robotic arm for extravehicular loads.
The 23-ton Wentian lab already in orbit is designed for clinical and biological experiments and is heavier than any single-module spacecraft in space lately.
Next year, China plans to launch the Xuntian Space Telescope, which, not being a component of Tiangong, will orbit in series with the station and can sometimes dock there for maintenance.
In total, the station will feature approximately 3,880 cubic feet of pressurized interior space.
China’s manned area program officially turns 3 decades old this year. But it began in 2003, when China became the third country after the United States and Russia to send a human to the area using its own resources.
The program is run by the military wing of the ruling Communist Party, the People’s Liberation Army, and has proceeded methodically and almost entirely without external support. The United States has excluded China from the International Space Station because of its ties to the military.
Before launching the Tianhe module, China’s manned area program introduced a pair of single-module stations that it supplied as verification platforms.
The permanent Chinese station will weigh about 66, a fraction of the length of the ISS, which introduced its first module in 1998 and weighs about 465Array.
With a lifespan of 10 to 15 years, Tiangong may one day be the only station in the area still operational if the ISS sticks to its 30-year operational plan.
China has also had success with unmanned missions, and its lunar exploration program generated quite a stir in the media last year when its Yutu 2 rover returned photographs of what some described as a “mysterious cabin” but, at most, is probably just a rock of a few. kind. The rover is the first to be placed on the little-explored distant aspect of the moon.
China’s Chang’e Five probe returned moon rocks to Earth for the first time since the 1970s in December 2000 and another Chinese rover is searching for evidence of life on Mars. Officials are also a manned project to the Moon.
The program has also generated controversy. In October 2021, China’s Foreign Ministry rejected a report that China had tested a hypersonic missile two months earlier and said it had just tested whether a new spacecraft could be reused.
China is also reportedly boarding a very secret plane.
China’s area program proceeded cautiously and went largely smoothly.
However, complaints have been filed against China for allowing rocket stages to fall to Earth uncontrollably twice before. Indian Ocean.
China’s development functions were laid out in the Pentagon’s most recent defense strategy released Thursday.
“In addition to expanding its traditional forces, the PLA is advancing and integrating its space, counterspace, cyber, electronic, and informational warfare functions to aid its holistic technique to joint warfare,” the strategy says.
The United States and China are at odds over a variety of issues, namely the self-governing island of Taiwan, which Beijing is threatening to annex by force. Island, staging war games and staging a blockade drill.