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BEIJING — Chinese It has committed to completing the orbiting space station by the end of the year, and said it plans to have more than 40 launches for 2022, roughly on par with the United States.
The launches will include two Shenzhou crewed missions, two Tianzhou cargo spacecraft and two additional modules of the station, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Thursday. China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation known as HELMET.
Science modules Mengtian and Wentian will join the Tianhe core module, which currently hosts a team of three.
Launch schedule shows how Chinese‘s traditionally cautious program ramps up the tempo of its missions as it seeks to take a leading role in space exploration.
The US expects about the same number of launches this year, after the pace slowed in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Supply chains for important products like computer chips have been disrupted, and liquid oxygen used as rocket fuel has to be diverted to hospitals to save patients.
Among the most anticipated is the launch around March of the Space Launch System, a 1,010 meters (332 feet) long rocket planned for future lunar missions.
Chinese‘s military space program was banned from the International Space Station mainly due to US objections.
Mostly self-employed Chinese Tiangong continued to progress through the space station program, building and then abandoning two experimental stations before embarking on the latest iteration.
The current six-month Shenzhou-13 mission of the crew in Tianhe ChineseIt’s the third country to do so, after Russia and the United States, for the longest time since it launched a human into space in 2003.
The crew conducted a couple of spacewalks, including the first by a Chinese female astronaut, and conducted tests with the station’s robotic shuttle arm, which successfully landed and then re-docked the Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft on Thursday.
The three are the second crew on permanent station, which will weigh about 66 tons when completed, a quarter of the ISS that launched its first module in 1998 and weighs about 450 tons.
Chinese He also noted success with uncrewed missions, and the lunar exploration program sparked media coverage last year when the Yutu 2 rover sent back pictures, described by some as a “mystery hut”, but likely just some rock. sort.
The rover is the first to be placed on the far less explored side of the moon. ChineseThe Chang’e 5 probe returned Moon rocks to Earth for the first time since the 1970s in December 2000, and another Chinese rover is searching for evidence of life on Mars.
The program also sparked controversy. In October, ChineseThe State Department denied a report Chinese He had tested a hypersonic missile two months ago and said he was just testing whether a new spacecraft could be reused.
Chinese It is also reportedly developing a highly secretive spaceplane.
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