China Launches Core Module To Build 1st Permanent Space Station In Orbit

China has launched the core module for its first permanent space station in orbit, kicking off the construction of the outpost which is estimated to complete in 2022, AP reported.

The 18-metre-long module, named "Tianhe," meaning "Harmony of the Heavens," lifted off at 11:23 p.m. EDT (08:53 a.m. on April 29) atop a heavy-lift Long March 5B rocket from the Wenchang Launch Center on the southern island of Hainan, located about 14 miles off mainland China.

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AP

Tianhe will have living quarters for up to three astronauts--they are planned to come aboard in June--for stays of up to six months, along with the station¡¯s control centre, power, propulsion and life-support systems.

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And once it reaches space, Beijing will send at least 10 more missions to build and supply the space station. These include two more modules; four cargo supply shipments; and four missions with crews.

An artist¡¯s impression of the completed Chinese Space Station | Credit: Getty Images

Humans have lived on a total of 11 space stations in Earth orbit since the Soviet Union launched the first such facility, Salyut 1, about half a century ago. The Chinese Space Station plans to add another outpost after launching two comparatively smaller space labs--Tiangong-1 in 2011 and Tiangong-2 in 2016--which were eventually destroyed upon re-entering Earth¡¯s atmosphere.

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The International Space Station (ISS), the largest and most expensive human-made structure in space built in cooperation with 15 countries, is currently the only fully operational space station in orbit and will weigh four times more than the T-shaped, 100-metric-ton Chinese Space Station (CSS).

NASA

Tianhe core module is designed to operate for more than 10 years and features a total of five docking ports, which theoretically means future expansion with an extra module.

The space station will have 14 refrigerator-size scientific experiment racks and more than 50 docking points for experiments to check how materials react to space exposure.

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The CSS already has several international partners, including space experts from France, Sweden, Russia and Italy. So far, about 100 experiments have been selected such as work on ultracold atoms, research quantum mechanics, materials science research and work on medicine in microgravity.

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A few weeks after the Tianhe mission, a Chinese probe will land on Mars. And a couple years later, China plans to send a large space telescope to join it in orbit, which is claimed to have a field of view 300 times greater than that of 31-year-old Hubble Space Telescope.