China Space Station

The low Earth orbit is becoming a dangerous playing field. At present, there are 4,411 SpaceX Starlink satellites that roam there and CEO Elon Musk plans to launch many more of them in the near future. As a result, these lower orbits are beginning to get very crowded. A new report has found that Starlink satellites had to make more than 25,000 collision-avoidance maneuvers in just a six-month period to avoid hitting another object in space. That is around 137 maneuvers a day, on average.As per a report filed by SpaceX…

China sent three astronauts to its Tiangong space station on Tuesday, putting a civilian into orbit for the first time as it pursues plans to send a crewed mission to the Moon by 2030.The world's second-largest economy has invested billions of dollars in its military-run space programme in a push to catch up with the United States and Russia. The Shenzhou-16 crew took off atop a Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China at 9:31 am (0131 GMT), AFP journalists saw. They docked at the…

China says it will soon begin training foreign astronauts for trips to its newly completed orbiting space station.Long a source of national pride and symbol of technological advancement, the Chinese space program is taking on a new diplomatic and political role, much in the way the United States and former Soviet Union leveraged theirs. Multiple countries have asked for rides to the Tiangong space station, program official Chen Shanguang said in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV that aired Saturday. “We will soon…

China’s new space station opens for business in an increasingly competitive era of space activity The International Space Station is no longer the only place where humans can live in orbit.On Nov. 29, 2022, the Shenzhou 15 mission launched from China's Gobi Desert carrying three taikonauts – the Chinese word for astronauts. Six hours later, they reached their destination, China's recently completed space station, called Tiangong, which means “heavenly palace” in Mandarin. The three taikonauts replaced the existing crew…

Three Chinese astronauts safely returned to Earth on Sunday after six months aboard the Tiangong space station. Three Chinese astronauts safely returned to Earth on Sunday after six months aboard the Tiangong space station, state media quoted the country's space agency as saying, with their mission deemed a "complete success."The team, which had been aboard the station since early June, touched down at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia at 8:09 pm Beijing time (1209 GMT), Xinhua news agency said, citing the…

The station has now expanded to its maximum size, with three modules and three spacecraft attached for a total mass of nearly 100 tons. Three Chinese astronauts docked early Wednesday with their country's space station, where they will overlap for several days with the three-member crew already onboard and expand the facility to its maximum size. Docking with the Tiangong station came at 5:42 a.m. Wednesday, about 6 1/2 hours after the Shenzhou-15 spaceship blasted off atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket from the…

Chinese astronauts on Wednesday arrived at the Tiangong space station, where they completed the country's first-ever crew handover in orbit, state news agency Xinhua reported. The trio blasted off aboard a Long March-2F rocket at 11:08 pm (1508 GMT) from the Jiuquan launch centre in northwestern China's Gobi desert, Xinhua said, citing the China Manned Space Administration (CMSA). The vessel -- carrying veteran Fei Junlong and first-time astronauts Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu -- successfully docked with the station…

The final module of China's Tiangong space station successfully docked with the core structure on Tuesday, state media said -- a key step in its completion by year's end and a landmark moment in the country's space ambitions. Tiangong is one of the crown jewels in Beijing's well-funded programme -- which has landed robotic rovers on Mars and the Moon, and made the country only the third to put humans in orbit -- as it looks to catch up with major spacefaring powers like the United States and Russia. China has been…

Mengtian was blasted into space on Monday afternoon from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on the southern island province of Hainan. China on Monday launched the third and final module to complete its permanent space station and realize a more than decade-long effort to maintain a constant crewed presence in orbit, as its competition with the U.S. grows increasingly fierce. Mengtian was blasted into space on Monday afternoon from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on the southern island province of Hainan. A…

China added a laboratory to its permanent orbiting space station Monday as…