Chinese Space Station
What China has planned on its brand-new Earth-orbiting space station
The Tiangong (‘Heaven’s Palace’) program has been declared a top priority for the China National Space Administration’s (CNSA) schedule this year. The three-module station will focus on research spanning astronomy, life sciences, material sciences and combustion. The nation is planning 11 missions in 2021 and 2022 to build the station, including three module launches, four Tianzhou cargo ship missions and four Shenzhou crewed missions.
The ambitious project is particularly impressive considering China began space exploration later than the US and Russia. We don’t know when China’s space program really started, as much of the program evolved largely in secret while it was under the joint control of the Chinese military and the Commission for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense. In 1964 the space program
was managed by the Seventh Ministry of Machine Building, which in 1983 became the Ministry of Aerospace Industry. In 1993 the CNSA was officially founded, roughly 34 years after NASA, when the ministry was split into the CNSA and the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). While the CNSA is largely responsible for policy, the CASC is responsible for the execution of procedures, including Tiangong.
China’s modular space station will be about onesixth the size of the International Space Station (ISS), a project that China has been unable to get involved with since being banned from the venture by the US in 2011. Though it is unclear exactly why the US decided to ban China, it is speculated that China’s fledgling space agency was seen as too inexperienced to contribute significantly to the ISS, and with additional security concerns raised by the US, China was prevented from even setting foot on the station.
Despite the US freezing China out of space cooperation opportunities, it hasn’t stopped the nation from making substantial progress in the space sector. In fact, the tables could turn in the near future, as the ISS is nearing the end of its operational life just as Tiangong will be starting out. Though Tiangong will be a fraction of the size of the ISS, there may come a point in time in which it is the only space station in operation, making it a very valuable commodity. How this could influence both exploration and research in space is yet to be determined, as there is currently no formal end date for ISS operations. “While the ISS is currently approved to operate through at least December 2024 by the international partner governments, from a technical standpoint we have cleared the ISS to fly until the end of 2028,” said NASA officials.
Previously shunned from being a part of the ISS, and now with more than 40 missions planned just this year by CASC, China is no longer stuck on the sidelines of space exploration. China is making good progress on its space station, with the core module Tianhe (‘Joining of the Heavens’) recently passing a flight acceptance review and scheduled to be launched in spring 2021, though China has not yet announced a definitive timeline. After Tianhe has been successfully launched into orbit, an uncrewed Tianzhou supply mission will visit the module. The Tianzhou 2 spacecraft has also passed its flight readiness review, and will be launched to Tianhe aboard a Long March 7 rocket from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site.
After the Tianhe launch and cargo mission, the first crewed mission to the core module will take place. This will be the first of four construction missions to the space station, whereby three taikonauts will help prepare Tianhe and ready the module for docking with a further two modules.
On 1 October 2020, China announced a group of 18 taikonauts that will be participating in the nation’s space station project. The group consists of seven pilots, seven spaceflight engineers and four payload specialists, though the identities of those selected have not yet been released. This recruitment process took a couple of years, with 2,500 candidates whittled down to just 18. The new recruits will join fellow taikonauts who were chosen in previous recruitment rounds in 1998 and 2010, where only air force pilots were permitted to apply.
The increased ‘diversity pool’ of this latest drive reflects China’s changing needs for the construction and operation of a modular space station. A space station requires a consortium of specialists who can perform a variety of tasks, from control and management of the spacecraft to carrying out a diverse range of experiments spanning astronomy, Earth observation, medical sciences, material sciences and microgravity physics.
According to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), selection of subsequent batches will be carried out in due course, though there are no details on selection criteria. The latest recruits are undertaking extensive training so they are ready to join the operational phase of the space station, while active taikonauts from earlier recruitment rounds are preparing for upcoming missions and extra-vehicular activities. They will be involved in the first missions to Tianhe, as well as construction missions involving the two experimental modules Wentian (‘Quest for the Heavens’) and Mengtian (‘Dreaming of the Heavens’).
The modules, each weighing around 20 tonnes, will be delivered separately to Tianhe by the Long March 5B, which can lift up to 23 tonnes. The first demonstration flight of the rocket was successfully carried out in May 2020, with this uncrewed test flight providing China with valuable performance data on crucial components such as heat shields and parachutes. Final testing of the rocket is currently underway in Tianjin in northeastern China, after which the components of the rocket will be transported by cargo ship to the launch site.
Once all three modules are fully assembled, the space station will weigh around 90 tonnes. This
impressive project has been a long time in the making. In 1992 the Chinese National Manned
Space Program was given the designation Project 921. The 92 represented the year it began, and the 1 designates that it is the first major long-term national project started that year. Project 921 was broadly divided into three phases, which included a crewed launch mission followed by a temporary space station and then finally the construction of a permanent space station.
The first phase of Project 921 was achieved on 15 October 2003 when taikonaut Yang Liwei was launched into space aboard the Shenzhou spacecraft by a Long March 2F rocket. Yang spent 21 hours in space and orbited Earth 14 times before returning aboard the re-entry module and touching down near a landing site in Inner Mongolia. Two years later the Shenzhou 6 mission marked the sixth flight of the Shenzhou module and the second crewed flight for the Chinese space program. During this mission two taikonauts, Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng, orbited Earth 75 times over near five days before returning safely to Earth.
These missions demonstrated that China has a good grasp of the technology needed to put humans safely into space, and marked the last mission of the first phase. China then began work on phase two, during which the nation launched two prototype space labs: Tiangong-1 in 2011 and Tiangong-2 in 2016. Both space labs were visited by taikonauts aboard Shenzhou spacecraft, helping to demonstrate the capabilities of the technologies required for the construction of the Tiangong modular space station. In 2017 China was able to test autonomous refuelling in microgravity by using the Tianzhou 1 spacecraft to dock and refuel Tiangong-2 in low-Earth orbit. This was a particularly important milestone in the Chinese space program, as the future space station will need to be able to replenish fuel supplies that are spent when the station needs to occasionally raise its orbit to counter the effects of atmospheric drag.
These two temporary space labs paved the way for a permanent modular space station, demonstrating China’s technical capabilities with regards to spacecraft construction, but also the importance of conducting scientific research in space. Phase two was therefore considered complete, and Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2 were deorbited in April 2018 and July 2019 respectively, burning up upon re-entry over the Pacific Ocean. Phase three is now well underway, with the proposed launch of Tianhe in spring this year.
Building upon the foundations of the two temporary space labs, China encouraged researchers from around the world to send in project proposals for experiments to be carried out on the permanent Tiangong space station. The proposals were then evaluated by a team of experts from the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), the CMSA and the international space community. On 12 June 2019 six experiments were accepted, with a further three conditionally selected.
The experiments chosen represent a global community, as the nine projects involved represent 23 institutions from 17 member states of the United Nations in Asian-Pacific, European, African, North American and South American regions, including private sectors and government organisations, as well as international associations.
China’s impressive human spaceflight program has gone from strength to strength as the nation has successfully implemented new technologies and achieved set milestones in a relatively short period of time. The Tiangong modular space station not only represents the significant strength of the nation’s space program, but also the power and value of global collaboration with regards to scientific research and understanding.