Nation's space journey continues apace(4)

Orbital outpost

In a low-Earth orbit about 400 km above the ground, China's Tiangong space station has been traveling around the mother planet for about three years and seven months.

The origin of China's aspirations to operate its own space station can be traced back to the mid-1980s when a group of distinguished space scientists started calling for government support to open manned space programs so that China would not lag behind in the global arena of space exploration.

In 1986, the government launched what later became known as Project 863. The national high-tech project covered seven major fields, ranging from biology to new energy. It set two major goals for China's space sector: one was to build large carrier rockets and reusable aerospace vehicles; the other was to construct a space station.

In September 1992, a massive plan made by scientists for crewed spaceflights and a permanent space station was approved by the top leadership, officially beginning the nation's manned space program.

Since then, the Chinese space community has made specific plans and taken a systematic approach, advancing patiently from simple, multi-day missions to sophisticated, monthlong flights involving several spacecraft.

After nearly 30 years of preparations that included five unmanned flights and six crewed missions, China launched the first, and central, component of its space station, the Tianhe core module, in April 2021, and began to send astronauts to fly with it to perform trial operations and prepare for the arrival of other parts.

In the second half of 2022, the Wentian and Mengtian science modules were launched to dock with Tiangong, completing the space station's construction phase.

The Tiangong is one of the largest and most advanced structures ever deployed in Earth's orbit and is the only operating space station independently built by a single nation.

So far, eight crews have been sent to man the space station, including the incumbent Shenzhou XIX team, who arrived at the outpost in late October.