China yesterday launched the second of three modules required to complete its new space station, state media reported, the latest step in Beijing’s ambitious space program.
The uncrewed craft, named Wentian, was propelled by a Long March 5B rocket at 2:22pm from the Wenchang launch site on the island of Hainan.
Beijing in April last year launched the central module of its space station Tiangong, which means “heavenly palace.”
Photo: Reuters
Almost 18m long and weighing 22 tonnes, the new module has three sleeping areas and a laboratory for scientific experiments.
It will dock with the existing module in space, a challenging operation that experts said would require several high-precision manipulations and use of a robotic arm.
“This is the first time China has docked such large vehicles together, which is a delicate operation,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
He said until the next module arrives, the space station will have a “rather unusual L-shape,” which requires a substantial amount of power to keep stable.
“These are all technical challenges that the USSR pioneered with the Mir station in the late 1980s, but it’s new to China,” he said. “But it will result in a much more capable station, with the space and power to carry out more scientific experiments.”
Wentian will also serve as a backup platform to control the space station in the event of a failure. The third and final module is scheduled to dock in October, and Tiangong — which should have a lifespan of at least 10 years — is expected to become fully operational by the end of the year.
Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the country’s plans for its heavily promoted “space dream” have been put into overdrive.
China has made large strides in catching up with the US and Russia, where astronauts and cosmonauts have decades of experience in space exploration.
The Chinese space station will be completed in 18 months, the fastest in history for a modular space station, space technology analyst Chen Lan (陳藍) said, adding that Mir and the International Space Station (ISS) took 10 and 12 years respectively.
China’s space program has already landed a rover on Mars and sent probes to the moon.
In addition to a space station, Beijing is planning to build a base on the moon and send humans there by 2030.
China has been excluded from the International Space Station since 2011, when the US banned NASA from engaging with the country.
While China does not plan to use its space station for global cooperation on the scale of the ISS, Beijing has said it is open to foreign collaboration.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver