China is aggressively pushing its program to set up an independent space station. The country has already started setting up the rotating laboratory. The Chinese space station will be called Tiangong. The Asian giant is planning to conduct as many as 1,000 scientific experiments at the laboratory when it becomes operational. The T-shaped space station is yet to be completed. China in June launched a crewed mission to assembly it. It sent three astronauts to Tianhe. It is the space station’s core cabin module. They will stay at the module for three months. Astronauts will study dark matter and gravitational waves among others. The list also includes a detailed analysis of the growth of cancer and pathogenic bacteria.
China started assembling the space station in April. The country has planned to make the space station operational by 2022 end. Tianhe, the station’s core module is just 17-meter long. The three astronauts will stay in the chamber and work on assembling other parts. China has plans to send eight more missions. Two of them will deliver two modules namely, Wentian and Mengtian. These two will house the astronauts where scientific experiments will be conducted. The space station will also have more than 20 experimental racks. There will be more than 65 connection points outside the space station. These points will be used to fix research hardware. All the points will face Earth.
China has already two small space labs. The labs are Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2. These labs allowed Chinese scientists to host over 100 experiments. These two labs, however, are no longer in Earth’s orbit. The new space station will have brand new facilities. It will encourage astronauts to conduct experiments. China has described the construction of the space station as complicated and challenging. Meanwhile, China has said that Tiangong will be open to collaboration from other agencies, including America’s NASA. It added that the laboratory will improve the ability to conduct science experiments in space and help in planning future space missions.
