BEIJING: China plans to expand its space station to six modules from three in coming years, offering astronauts from other nations an alternative platform for near-earth missions as the NASA-led International Space Station (ISS) nears the end of its lifespan. The operational lifetime of the Chinese space s
A Long March-2F carrier rocket, carrying the Shenzhou-16 spacecraft and three astronauts, takes off from the launching area of Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center for a crewed mission to China's Tiangong space station, near Jiuquan, Gansu province, China, May 30, 2023.
At 180 metric tonnes after its expansion to six modules, Tiangong is still just 40 per cent of the mass of the ISS, which can hold a crew of seven astronauts. But the ISS, in orbit for more than two decades, is expected to be decommissioned after 2030, about the same time China has said it expects to become"a major space power".
"Giving up cooperation with China in the manned space domain is clearly short-sighted, which reveals that the US-led camp confrontation has led to a new space race," the Global Times, a nationalist Chinese tabloid, wrote at the time.
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