Chinese scientists are currently busy building a space station of their own. This comes as a direct retaliation to the space race dominance by NASA. The project currently uses many satellite links and aims to topple the International Space Station of NASA. The China Space Agency has currently started work to build a new space station from 2021. The schedule of the build includes 11 ambitious planned launches. But, the most important part is that it will reach completion in 2 years.
The 66-ton space station will host around 3 to 6 astronauts at any given time. Astronauts will have enough provision to last 6 months at a stretch. The space station will go live in 2023. The space station will be host to experiments ranging from space technology to zero-gravity biology.
An online research seminar was held for the international collaborative project on China #Space Station “FIAVAW”. It’s a Chinese-led project on #microgravity combustion among 6 fully accepted ones and has members from Tsinghua and @UTokyo_News_en. pic.twitter.com/5L56GTcflF
— Tsinghua University (@Tsinghua_Uni) June 2, 2020
China Space Station: Journey to space
The first module will go up if things go as planned. This gives rise to a controversial debut when the main stage rocket falls back in pieces. The first quarter of 2022 will observe a heavy-lift Long March 5B spacecraft which made a controversial debut last year. The rocket’s main stage scattered across the Atlantic in a haphazard manner, which proved bad for the environment.
The Chinese space agency announced plans to select their latest batch of astronauts this July. According to recent statements, the selection will for the first time include civilians with science and engineering backgrounds, not just military personnel from the People’s Liberation Army Air Force. Recently China agreed on terms with Italy for its space station program.
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Suryapratim Ray is an engineer, author, robotics hobbyist, and an active Quoran. Being a technical blogger, he covers the good, bad, and ugly of science on a regular basis at Sciencenews18. In addition to his passion for writing, he’s equally keen on learning classical music.