Beijing: China has announced to build its own space station, which it hoped will be operational by the end of the decade.
If everything goes according to plan, China will send a man to the moon by 2025 according to Ye Peijin, the commander in chief of the Chang’e (lunar landing) programme. Plans are also afoot to send probes to both Mars and Venus.
The plan for a 60-ton, three-module space station is the third and final phase of Project 921, a project that began in 1992 and which has already seen China become the third country to launch a man into space. In 2008, China carried out its first space walk, which was broadcast live to a huge audience on national television.
The space station, whose name will be picked by a public competition, will consist of a core module with two laboratory units, according to Xinhua, the state news agency.
It will be around one-fifth of the length of the International Space Station, currently the only other space station in orbit, and one-seventh of the weight, according to specifications released by China’s Manned Space Engineering Office.
“The 60-ton space station is rather small compared to the International Space Station (419 tons), and Russia’s Mir Space Station (137 tons) which served between 1996 and 2001,” said Pang Zhihao, a researcher and deputy editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine, Space International.
“But it is only the world’s third multi-module space station, which usually demands much more complicated technology than a single-module space lab,” he said.
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