China Plans To Assemble Giant Spacecraft In Orbit

Photo illustration (Mike Kiev/Unsplash)

JAKARTA - The Chinese government asked scientists to participate in a project that will last for half a decade, to design a giant spacecraft.

The plan is outlined in the National Natural Science Foundation of China's project document in an appendix entitled Guidelines for Major Projects of the Ministry of Mathematical Sciences.

According to the document quoted from Slashgear, Sunday, August 29, the Chinese government is looking for scientists who can build an aircraft that is one kilometer (0.6 miles) long and will be built in orbit, not Earth. It aims to provide strategic aerospace equipment.

Qualified scientists can design lightweight aircraft to keep the number of launches required as low as possible, and second, intelligent designs that can be assembled easily in space.

Later, scientists will be asked to design and build aircraft modules that can each be individually launched and then assembled in orbit. It is known, the purpose of this project is to utilize space resources in the future, exploration of the mysteries of the universe, and long-term life in orbit.

It will be a five-year project just to develop the concept, and five projects will be selected for development with a budget of US$2.3 million each. This amount of funding may represent only the first step in researching the concept from scientists, given the limited time to actually build and launch a spacecraft, even a small one.

China has stepped into space exploration on a large scale in recent years. Such as the Tianwen-1 mission to Mars, including the rover that successfully landed China on Mars for the first time as quoted from Digital Trends.

There was also the Chang'e 4 mission to the far side of the Moon which brought samples of lunar rock for the first time in more than 40 years. Not only that, but China will also have a new space station in which the first module was put into orbit earlier this year, and the last of which they have carried out its first cargo mission and two other space trips.