HATCH the laboratory at the end of Mengtian was opened for the first time on October 31.
Three Chinese astronauts slid from the neighboring nuclear module Tianhe into a shiny new, 18-meter-long, spacious cylinder.
Space station The tiangong was thus finished and mounted. China had just launched the third large part of the station.
China built its position in only 1.5 years – and strictly on schedule. China has not been late in its space program like others.
China is now finally a big gambler in space, a superpower. Achievements began to accumulate in the late 2010s.
In January 2019, China was the first in the world to land a lander on the side of the Moon that is not visible to Earth.
China brought samples to Earth from the Moon in December 2020, also rare. Before that, the Moon’s soil was last touched by the Earth lander Luna 24 in August 1976.
Next year 2021 it took February-May to Mars up to the satellite, lander and rover, also without problems.
China’s only decent competitor still orbits the Earth above it.
China’s above the station, at an altitude of about 500 kilometers, the International Space Station ISS orbits the Earth. The United States led its construction from 1998 to 2011.
The ISS is of course much bigger, but it will soon be approaching retirement age. The US federal government decided late on the president Joe Biden management that the station will be decommissioned in 2030.
Earth is building a small space station Gateway in orbit around the Moon, but it is small, and mostly a stopover for astronauts going to the Moon.
of the ISS of course, only private stations and residences have been planned for Earth’s orbit as a replacement. Just designed.
Russian cosmonauts are also residents of the international ISS station. They have threatened to leave the station even before the deadline of 2030.
Everything is no longer smooth from the former space power of the Soviet Union, Russia, to the former model. At the time of writing, a small hole has just been found in the side of the station’s Russia module.
Tiangong on the other hand, will remain on track for at least 10–15 years, perhaps the entire 2030s.
A maximum of six astronauts can live on the station at a time. At times there is this full manning and feminization, at least when the astronauts are changed every six months or so.
At Tiangong of course, experiments are also carried out in an almost weightless state, in microgravity.
More than a thousand and at least 23 different test series and are planned for the 2020s.
For example, about 12,000 seeds of different plant species have been brought to the station. They are exposed to radiation and microgravity for six months. Then the seeds and plants are brought back to Earth.
At the station astronauts study how weightlessness affects not only plants, but also muscles and bones. Accurate atomic clocks have also been brought to the station. Low temperatures can be produced in refrigerators, says the Space Department of the Chinese Academy.
Some of these experiments have already been done on the ISS station, and now they are being repeated.
China’s the space program is progressing like a train on schedule, as planned and with certainty.
The country says it will slowly include other countries as well.
The US is not in line. Cooperation is already prevented by land-based export bans. Until now, China has been successful in space projects without the help of its big brother.
I however, is not a model student in space. The United States, Europeans and other space nations are annoyed by one shortcoming. China does not care about the fate of its empty launch vehicles.
When the Chinese launch vehicle Long March 5 rises into space, the parts of the launch vehicle quickly run out of fuel.
One big unnecessary block is a part of the body of the launcher weighing about 23 tons. It is the height of a ten-story building.
Normally, these parts are taken into orbit around the Earth. From there, air traffic control can direct them to fall into uninhabited areas, usually the sea, far from human settlement.
China doesn’t seem to do so with the Long March 5B launch vehicle parts. When the Long March left the launch vehicle parts behind in 2020, they landed in West Africa.
The falling parts caused some damage in the villages of Ivory Coast, but no one was killed.
Last year, hot streaks from the Long March hit near the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. Last July, parts burned over the Sulu Sea, near the Philippines, says The New York Times.
In the past, China also experimented with a military satellite with a rough edge. It destroyed its own target with its weapons.
The impact did not take into account the fact that as a result of the experiment, thousands of small metal parts and chips were spread into Earth’s orbit.
Now they can collide with other satellites. Even a small part causes a lot of destruction, because its speed in the Earth’s orbit is almost 28,000 kilometers per hour.
No law requires China to mend its ways. Of course, there are international agreements on the use of space.
China’s rising to space power is a problem in the eyes of the United States.
“I would like us to be in the lead when man advances in space, not representatives of an authoritarian government like the Chinese.”
That’s what an engineer says Jan Osburg, who are engineers from the US research institute Rand. He has followed China’s space program closely.
Space station is, however, only one stage for China. Now it is heading towards the Moon and Mars.
If the programs of the space powers proceed as planned, the countries will most likely meet in the region of the Moon’s south pole in the 2030s.
Mixed In the 2030s, China and the United States plan to build their bases near the south pole of the Moon. The bases rise in areas where the Sun shines almost every day.
I hope there will be a place in the sun for both of them.
Graphics: TUIJA KIVIMÄKI / HS, Graphic News, sources: Reuters, Nasa, Chinese Space Administration CNSA, Aviation Week, AFP, South China Morning Post, Space.com
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