Getting to know China’s Tiangong Space Station

Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —

China has continued to show its fangs in space in recent years. This is shown through development projects space station named Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) in Earth orbit.

Tiangong is a self-contained satellite made in China. Tiangong is the successor to the Tiangong-1 space laboratory which was launched in 2011 and and Tiangong-2 in 2016.

Tiangong was built with a modular design, similar to the International Space Station (ISS) operated by the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency.

As a modular space station, Tiangong will be built on the modules delivered in stages. Each module is called by a different name.

Modul-modul pada Tiangong

The first core module was delivered last April called Tianhe. Then the next module is Tianzhou, Wentian, Shenzhou, and Mengtian.

Launch Xinhua, the second lab capsule named Mengtian has a similar function to the first lab capsule. The capsule is equipped with a special airlock chamber to support the entry and exit of cargo and instruments with the assistance of astronauts and mechanical weapons.

The experimental module named Wentian and Mengtian, launched in 2022, will host a large number of experiments in various fields including astronomy, aerospace medicine, extraterrestrial life science, biotechnology, microgravity fluid physics, microgravity combustion, and space technology. space.

International science payloads and experiments have also been selected for trips to CSS through a collaboration between the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).

CSS will also be joined in orbit by the optical module of Xuntian, the Hubble-class space telescope that will orbit. The space telescope will have an aperture of 2 meters comparable to Hubble but have a field of view 300 times larger, allowing 40 percent of the sky to be surveyed in a decade.

Xuntian will be able to dock with CSS for maintenance and improvement. CSS can also be expanded from three to six modules, using the developed modules as backups.

Upon completion, Tiangong will consist of core modules installed in two laboratories with a combined weight of nearly 70 tonnes.