China Builds Space Station Which Will Be Called Heaven Palace

JAKARTA - China does not want to be left behind in exploring outer space. The latest in the bamboo curtain country's plans to build their own space station.

Quoting Space Daily, Monday, November 30, Qu Yiguang, Deputy Head of Launching Project Chang Zheng 5, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, dubbed the station the Tiangong or Palace of Heaven.

Tiangong is slated for completion in 2022, after more than 10 missions for orbit construction and assembly. Shaped like a T, Tiangong will have a core module, called Tianhe, in the center and one lab capsule on either side.

"This Chang Zheng 5 launch vehicle will carry out the largest spacecraft launch mission in China," said Qu.

The station will offer up to 5,650 cubic feet of living space on three modules. Less than the ISS, which has 13,696 cubic feet of space.

In the future, this space station will no longer carry water from Earth as before. They will use the water vapor that the astronauts emit and the recycled urine is also purified. Tiangong will also carry an engine that can produce additional oxygen.

Like the US's ISS, Tiangong will have room for science experiments in fields ranging from astronomy to basic physics.

Previously it was known that China had made a space station with one room, dubbed Tiangong-1, which was launched in 2011. Unfortunately, the station burned and destroyed in Earth's atmosphere seven years later.