It took off at 3:23 UTC, from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on Hainan Island, southern China, the central capsule of your space station.
The central capsule, called Tianhe, or Harmony of the Heavens, is 16.6 meters long and 4.2 meters in diameter. The construction of the space station marks the beginning of the third stage of China's manned space program, which was approved by the government in 1992.
The largest ship in China
Specifically, a Long March 5B heavy-lift carrier rocket has been launched, with a central stage and four side boosters, an equivalent height to an 18-story building and a takeoff weight of 849 tons.
Watch: #China launches "Tianhe," core module of space station🚀🚀 pic.twitter.com/zAFZ5uaDWm
— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) April 29, 2021
The launch is intended to transport the 22.5-ton capsule, the largest and heaviest spacecraft China has ever built, to a low Earth orbit about 400 kilometers above Earth to place the first piece of the country's space station.
The multi-module space station, called Tiangong, or Heavenly Palace, will be mainly composed of three components, a central module attached to two space laboratories, with a combined weight of almost 70 tons. The entire Tiangong station is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2022 and is scheduled to operate for about 15 years.
The module sent will be essential for the future operations of the space station, since the astronauts will live there and control the entire station from the inside. Next year, Tiangong's two space laboratories, two manned missions and two robotic cargo flights to continue station construction.
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The news
China launches the central capsule of its future space station, one of the largest and most sophisticated space facilities
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.