A representative from the China Space Launch Agency (CMSA) acknowledged the launch’s “success” a quarter of an hour later.
At 2:22 PM (06:22 GMT), a Long March 5B rocket launched the unmanned spaceship with the call sign Wentian from the Wenchang launch facility on China’s tropical island of Hainan.
Beijing’s ambitious space program took another step forward on Sunday with the launch of the second of the three modules required to construct its new space station, according to state media.
On neighbouring beaches, hundreds of people assembled to capture the launcher ascending through the air in a cloud of white smoke on camera. The Wentian lab module skillfully detached from the rocket and joined its intended orbit after about eight minutes of flight, the CMSA reported. This made the launch a success.
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| China Launches Second of its three modules space station |
In April 2021, Beijing launched the main part of the Tiangong space station, which is Chinese for “blissful palace.”
The new module, which is over 18 metres long and 22 tonnes in weight, contains three sleeping rooms and space for research.
It will dock with the current module in space, a difficult procedure that will call for the utilisation of a robotic arm and multiple high-precision manipulations.
According to Jonathan McDowell, an astronaut at the Harvard-Smithsonian Institute for Astrophysics, “China has never lodged such huge ships together, which is a difficult process.”
According to him, the space station will have a “quite strange L-shape” until the next module comes, requiring a lot of electricity to maintain stability.
All of these technical difficulties, he continued, were “pioneered by the USSR with the Mir station in the mid-1980s, but they are new to China.” But it will produce a station that is considerably more capable and has the room and resources to do more scientific research.
In the case of a failure, Wentian will also act as a backup platform for managing the space station. Tiangong, which should have a lifecycle of at least 10 years, is anticipated to be completely complete by the end of the year after the third and final module docks in October.
China’s Space Plan
The country’s preparations for its widely publicised “space dream” have been intensified under Chinese President Xi Jinping. China has made significant progress in catching up to the United States and Russia, countries having astronauts and cosmonauts who have extensive space exploration expertise.
According to Chen Lan, an analyst for the website Go-Taikonauts.com, which focuses on China’s space programme, the CSS (Chinese Space Station) will finish construction in one and a half years, which will be the fastest in history for any modular space station. In contrast, it took 10 and 12 years, respectively, to build Mir and the International Space Station.
China’s space agency has already dispatched probes to the Moon and Mars and landed a rover there. Beijing also intends to construct a facility on the Moon and send people there by 2030 in addition to a space station.
Since the United States forbade NASA from cooperating with China, China has been denied access to the International Space Station.
Beijing has stated that it is open to foreign collaboration even though China does not intend to use its space station for international cooperation on the same scale as the ISS.
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