TIANGONG SPACE STATION - SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
News: China
launches third and final space station component
What's in the news?
● China's
third and final module docked with its permanent space station to further a
more than decade-long effort to maintain a constant crewed presence in orbit,
as its competition with the U.S. grows increasingly fierce.
Key takeaways:
● Mengtian, or “Celestial
Dream,” joins Wentian as the second laboratory
module for the station, collectively known as Tiangong, or “Celestial Palace.”
Both are connected to the Tianhe core module where the crew lives and works.
● Like
its predecessors, Mengtian was launched aboard a Long March-5B carrier rocket,
a member of China’s most powerful family of launch vehicles.
● Tiangong
is currently populated by a crew of two
male and one female astronauts, according to the China Manned Space Agency.
● Following
Mengtian’s arrival, an additional uncrewed Tianzhou cargo craft is due to dock
with the station next month, with another crewed mission scheduled for
December, at which time crews may overlap as Tiangong has sufficient room to
accommodate six astronauts.
● Next year, China plans to launch the Xuntian space telescope, which, while not a part of Tiangong, will orbit in sequence with the station and can dock occasionally with it for maintenance.
Tiangong Space Station:
● Tiangong
means “Heavenly Palace”.
● It
was 10.4 metres long and 3.35 metres wide at its widest point, and weighed 8.6
metric tonnes.
● It
was launched on September 15, 2016 and, in late 2016, hosted two Chinese
astronauts for 30 days in what was China’s longest manned space mission so far.
● The
recently decommissioned space lab followed the Tiangong-1, China’s first space
station, which crashed into the southern Pacific Ocean on April 1, 2018 after
Chinese scientists lost control of the spacecraft.
● China
had launched Tiangong-1 in 2011 as proof-of-concept of technologies for future
stations.
● The
Tiangong will be fully operational by
the end of 2022.
● China
was the third country in the world next to U.S and Russia having its own space
station.
Features of Tiangong Space Station:
● The
significant feature of Tiangong is its two
robotic arms.
● The
US has previously expressed concern over its ability to grab objects including
satellites from space.
● The
10-meter-long arm was in action previously seen in action successfully grabbing
and moving a 20 tonne Tianzhou-2 cargo ship in a test.
● One
of the noteworthy tasks for the Shenzhou-14 crew is to test and operate the
large and small arms.
● The
small arm is quite flexible and can perform operations with greater precision.
● The
T-shaped Tiangong space station, when complete, is expected to be around 20% as
massive as the International Space Station, or about 460 tonnes on Earth.