China’s prestige space project
The astronauts will complete the “Heavenly Palace”.
6/5/2022 8:53 PM
With its own research station in space, China wants to catch up with other space nations. The People’s Republic spends billions on this. The final stage of completing the Heavenly Palace had now begun.
In another historic Chinese space mission, three astronauts have arrived at the Tiangong Space Station to finally complete its construction. The astronauts arrived at the Chinese space station after about “seven hours of flight,” Chinese state television reported. They departed from the Jiuquan Space Center in the Gobi Desert in a Long March-2F rocket.
The astronauts will expand the space station in six months. The plant should be fully operational by the end of the year. China wants to catch up with other space countries.
The astronaut team consists of two men and one woman. The commander is 43-year-old Air Force pilot Qin Dong. The other two members are Cai Zhuzhi and Liu Yang. The three astronauts are supposed to connect the two Tiangong units. According to state media, scientific experiments are also scheduled in addition to construction work.
First “Tiangong”, then the moon
It wasn’t until mid-April that three astronauts returned to Earth from Tiangong (“Heavenly Palace”). Their six-month stay in space was the PRC’s longest manned space mission to date. In addition to two field trips to work on the station, the astronauts – two men and a woman as well – used their stay on the space station to conduct many scientific experiments and technology tests.
The base unit “Tiangong” was launched in April last year. According to China’s plans, the space station will be in use for at least a decade. In recent years, the People’s Republic of China has invested billions in its space programs in order to catch up with the United States and Russia. The Chinese government plans to send humans to the moon for the first time in 2029.
