Beijing, China:
China successfully launched the latest mission to its Tiangong space station on Tuesday, with a crew including its first civilian astronaut.
It marked the latest space milestone for China as it appears to overtake the United States and Russia.
Here’s a look at China’s space program and where it’s headed:
Mao’s vow
Shortly after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, Chinese leader Mao Zedong said, “We too will make satellites.”
It took more than a decade, but in 1970 China launched its first satellite on a Long March rocket.
Manned space flight took decades longer, and Yang Liwei became China’s first “taikonaut” in 2003.
As launch approached, concerns about the viability of the mission led Beijing to cancel a live television broadcast at the last minute.
But it went smoothly, with Yang orbiting the Earth 14 times in a 21-hour flight.
Space Station and ‘Jade Rabbit’
Following the example of the United States and Russia, China began planning its own space station in orbit.
The Tiangong-1 lab was launched in 2011.
In 2013, the second Chinese woman in space, Wang Yaping, gave a video lesson from that craft to children across the country.
Tiangong-1 was also used for medical experiments and especially for tests in preparation for the construction of a space station.
That was followed by the “Jade Rabbit” lunar rover in 2013, which initially appeared to be a dud when it went dormant and stopped sending signals back to Earth.
It made a dramatic recovery, however, and ended up exploring the lunar surface for 31 months — much longer than its expected lifetime.
In 2016, China launched its second orbital laboratory, the Tiangong-2. Astronauts who have visited the station have conducted experiments growing rice and other plants in space.
‘Space dream’
Under President Xi Jinping, plans for China’s “space dream” have gained momentum.
It is finally trying to catch up with the United States and Russia after years of late meeting their milestones.
In addition to a space station, China plans to build a base on the moon, reiterating this week its goal of landing humans on the moon by 2030.
Plans for the moon suffered a setback in 2017 when the powerful Long March-5 Y2 rocket failed to launch on a mission to launch communications satellites into orbit.
That forced the postponement of the launch of Chang’e-5, which was originally planned to collect lunar samples in the second half of 2017.
Another robot, the Chang’e-4, landed on the far side of the moon in January 2019 – a historic first.
Chang’e-5 finally landed on the moon in 2020, raised a Chinese flag on the lunar surface and returned the first lunar samples to Earth in four decades.
And in 2021, its Tianwen-1 mission successfully landed a rover on the surface of Mars.
Palace in the sky
The last module of the Tiangong space station – meaning “heavenly palace” – successfully docked with the core structure last year.
It contains several advanced scientific equipment, the state news agency Xinhua reported, including “the world’s first space-based cold atomic clock system”.
Tiangong is expected to remain in low Earth orbit for at least 10 years at an altitude between 400 and 450 kilometers (250 and 280 mi), realizing China’s ambition to maintain a long-term human presence in space.
It will be constantly manned by rotating teams of three astronauts, who will conduct science experiments and help test new technologies.
After Tuesday’s launch, the next mission to Tiangong, the Shenzhou-17, is expected in October.
(This story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)