By Dr Ajey Lele,
In October 2003 (Shenzhou 5 mission), China became the only third nation following the United States and the erstwhile USSR to place a man in space in an indigenously created spacecraft. This was a ‘feather in the cap’ for China’s space programme. During the last two decades China’s space programme has seen an expositional development with a lot of accomplishment stories. Now China has added an additional ‘feather in the cap’, when on 17 Jun 2021, 3 Chinese astronauts (taikonauts) entered the made in China Space Station (CSS). More than a decade back, China had announced the specifics of their space station programme. It was pointed out that the station is most likely to get completed by 2020–2022. It is genuinely praiseworthy that even in the Covid-19 period China is in a position to stick to its timeline.
China’s Shenzhou-12 capsule had taken off atop its Long March 2F rocket with 3 astronauts. It was an pretty much seven hours of journey to attain the however to be totally established space station. Amongst these 3 astronauts who have worked with the Chinese air force, two have been in space in earlier missions also and one of the two have even an practical experience of undertaking a spacewalk. This space station is referred to as Tiangong or Heavenly Palace and is situated 390 km above the earth’s surface. It is a 66-tonne, multi-module space station with a created lifespan of about 10 years. The initial aspect of this station was launched throughout Apr 2021 and is referred to as Tianhe. It offers energy and propulsion and consists of the life assistance technologies and living accommodations essential for the going to astronauts.
China’s space station programme is a pretty systematic and nicely organised programme. Before this mission, two prototype space station missions have been undertaken. Tiangong-1 was the initial experimental module, which orbited the earth throughout the 2011 to 2018 period. It served as a crewed laboratory and assessed conduct of orbital rendezvous and checking on docking capabilities. This module was to operate for about two years, but its lifespan was extended by two more years. Subsequently, Tiangong-1 was to be deorbited and to undertake a controlled re-entry to the earth’s atmosphere and burn up owing to pretty higher temperatures. However, China’s space agency had lost handle of the station. During Apr 2018, this module re-entered the earth’s envelope and aspect of it had fallen in the southern Pacific Ocean, close to Tahiti. Tiangong-2 is also identified to have served its objective and basically played a important function towards testing significant technologies primarily for the conduct of future missions. Tiangong-2 was launched throughout September 2016 and got deorbited throughout July 2019.
It is anticipated that in a one year’s time, China would be in a position to totally establish the Tiangong space station. During the 2021-2022 period, there would be a total 11 launches and they would include things like 3 human missions. The major job would be to launch the remaining two lab modules and lastly make the whole space station operational. The principal job for the present mission is to make the 22.5-tonne Tianhe module operational.
The astronaut trio would be also undertaking numerous experiments, basically linked with technologies verification. There is an international element linked with these experimentations. China had supplied an chance to numerous scientific agencies globally, to conduct experiments on board of the China Space Station (CSS). It was a competitors jointly organised by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). Very excellent international response was received. During Jun 2019, the final results of this competitors have been announced. Along with a handful of other individuals, two Indian institutes have won this competitors and their projects are now aspect of China’s space station programme. Bengaluru based Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) has its gear onboard of Tiangong for studying the location involving stars and the Indian Institute of Technology based at BHU, Varanasi’s experiment is there for mastering the behaviour of partially visible fluids in microgravity. China has also announced that they would present an chance for astronauts from other nations to take a look at their space station following the project gets totally established.
It is significant to view China’s space station programme not in isolation, but at the backdrop of its all round space agenda. At present, China’s rovers (robotic gear) are operating on the Moon and Martian surface. Now with the initial phase accomplishment of the Tiangong space station programme, humans from China have also began operating in space. China has main ambitions of creating human presence on the surface of the Moon in significantly less than a decade’s time, say by 2030. Looking at China’s skills to largely retain the deadlines of their numerous space projects, it is pretty most likely that China would make the human presence on the surface of the Moon as planned. Possibly, the international space station (ISS) could stay operational at the most till 2028. This indicates by 2030, there could be Chinese nationals walking the Moon and the only space station operational would be not an international, but a (Chinese) national space station.
(The author is Senior Fellow, MP-IDSA, New Delhi. Views expressed are private and do not reflect the official position or policy of TheSpuzz Online. He can be reached at: [email protected])