China to expand Tiangong space station
The new colonial movement: At the 47th International Astronautical Congress in Baku, Chinese officials yesterday revealed that they intend to expand their Tiangong space station, almost doubling it in size.
The graphic to the right illustrates this, with the proposed new modules in magenta at the top.
“We will build a 180 tons, six-module assembly in the future,” Zhang said. Tiangong currently has three modules, each with a mass of around 22 tons.
A multi-functional expansion module with six docking ports will first be launched in the coming years to allow this expansion. This will dock at the forward port of the Tianhe core module. Full size modules can then be added to Tiangong. SpaceNews understands that the timeline for such launches is around four years from now. An expanded Tiangong would be just over a third of the mass of the roughly 450-metric-ton International Space Station (ISS).
The officials also said that they plan to add additional inflatable modules to the existing part of the station, as well as attachment points allowing for external experiments exposed to the environment of space.
The new colonial movement: At the 47th International Astronautical Congress in Baku, Chinese officials yesterday revealed that they intend to expand their Tiangong space station, almost doubling it in size.
The graphic to the right illustrates this, with the proposed new modules in magenta at the top.
“We will build a 180 tons, six-module assembly in the future,” Zhang said. Tiangong currently has three modules, each with a mass of around 22 tons.
A multi-functional expansion module with six docking ports will first be launched in the coming years to allow this expansion. This will dock at the forward port of the Tianhe core module. Full size modules can then be added to Tiangong. SpaceNews understands that the timeline for such launches is around four years from now. An expanded Tiangong would be just over a third of the mass of the roughly 450-metric-ton International Space Station (ISS).
The officials also said that they plan to add additional inflatable modules to the existing part of the station, as well as attachment points allowing for external experiments exposed to the environment of space.