Space Cooperation
China announced that all UN member states are welcome to jointly utilize its future China Space Station (CSS) on May 28.
“The CSS belongs not only to China, but also to the world,” said Shi Zhongjun, China’s Ambassador to the UN and Other International Organizations in Vienna.
“All countries, regardless of their size and level of development, can participate in the collaboration on an equal footing,” he said.
Interested public and private organizations, including institutes, academies, universities and private enterprises with scientific orientations, can identify their appropriate models of cooperation on board the CSS, whether it’s the growth of a space plant or the accommodation of an astronaut, said the ambassador.
The CSS, which is expected to be launched by 2019 and be completed and operating by 2022, will be the world’s first space station that is built by a developing country.
Consisting of one core module and two experimental modules, the CSS will have the capacity to accommodate up to three astronauts at a time and a maximum of six in rotation.
Operating in low Earth orbit about 400 km above the Earth’s surface, the CSS will be used in a wide range of research fields, including space medicine, life science, biotechnology, microgravity science, Earth science and space technology. days in the 13 cities in the region, up 2.2 percentage points year on year, ministry data showed.
The density of PM2.5 (airborne particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter), a key indicator of air pollution, dropped 18.8 percent year on year during the same period, while the density of PM10, another major pollutant, fell 12.9 percent.
Beijing saw the ratio of good air quality days increase by 3.9 percentage points to 64.7 percent in the period, with PM2.5 and PM10 density down 22.4 percent and 9.9 percent, respectively.
Nationwide, 338 cities had an average of 76.7 percent days with good air quality days, up 0.9 percentage points year on year.
However, in April, air quality got worse in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. The average amount of days with good air quality was 58 percent, down 13.7 percentage points from April last year, with lower PM2.5 density but higher PM 10 density.