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China is scheduled to launch a space station into orbit in less than an hour. According to Ars Technica:
China will take its next step toward a large space station on Thursday, when it intends to launch the Tiangong-2 laboratory into orbit. The 8.5-ton, 10.4-meter-long facility will launch from the Jiuquan launch center in the Gobi Desert, aboard a Long March 2-F rocket. The launch is set for 10:04am ET (14:04pm UTC) Thursday, and live video is available.
This space station, "Heavenly Palace 2," will be China's second after it launched the similarly sized Tiangong-1 laboratory in 2011. Following this week's launch, China plans to send two taikonauts to Tiangong-2 in four to six weeks aboard a Shenzhou-11 spacecraft. They will live there for about a month, testing out the lab's life support systems and performing scientific research. According to China's official news service, Xinhua, those experiments will involve areas of medicine, physics, and biology, as well as quantum key transmission, space atomic clock, and solar storm research.
China has plans within the next decade to send up an even larger space station. This, on top of plans to establish a moon colony, as well.
Also at Spaceflight Now.
[Update] The launch was a success — coverage at: phys.org and Nature.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 15 2016, @04:13PM
Can somebody with more knowledge comment on how difficult and impressive this is?
For example, this "space station" could be a modest "small room the size of your average compact car orbiting for a few weeks, expected to deorbit within a few months sent up as an experiment"... or it could be a multi-room complex which will survive for years and is expected for multiple return trips and continued use."
The article says it's about 40 tons, but I have no context to understand what that means. Is this amazing, impressive, or meh?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 15 2016, @04:33PM
I believe it's a single module. One launch got the entire thing up there.
We'll be able to appreciate the scale better when they send astronauts to dock with it in a few weeks.
The next iteration, Tiangong-3, will form the basis of a station that will be around Mir size.
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(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Thursday September 15 2016, @06:31PM
China aims to launch the Tianhe 1 module around 2018 to form the centerpiece of the country’s larger orbital complex. Two 20-ton research modules and power-generating solar power array will join Tianhe 1 in orbit by 2022, when the station will be declared operational with a permanent rotating three-person crew, according to Chinese state media reports.
Didn't hear anything about a Tiangong-3.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday September 15 2016, @08:13PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong-3 [wikipedia.org]
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-37370278 [bbc.com]
http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/missions/human-spaceflight/china-reveals-design-planned-tiangong-3-space-station/ [spaceflightinsider.com]
http://www.zmescience.com/space/second-china-space-station-robit/ [zmescience.com]
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