China on a mission as lab docks with space station

The Wentian module ended a 13-hour journey on Monday by docking on Monday with the Tiangong station.

An artist;s impression of of the space station after the Wentian module, on the left, had dockd with to the Tianhe core module on Monday. Picture: China Manned Space Agency

China has added its first science laboratory to its permanent orbiting space station, as Beijing moves towards having a fully operation platform by the year’s end.

The Wentian module ended a 13-hour journey by docking on Monday with the Tiangong station after being launched from the tropical island of Hainan.

Three astronauts who started their six-month mission aboard the space station last month oversaw the Wentian’s arrival and docking, according to the state-run Global Times. A second laboratory segment, the Mengtian, is due to be launched in October and will complete the space station.

A Long March 5B-Y3 rocket, China’s most powerful, carried the laboratory module in the third such launch since construction of its space station began. It was preceded by the Tianzhou-class cargo spacecraft and the Shenzhou-14 crewed spacecraft.

China’s space program is run by the People’s Liberation Army and has largely proceeded with Tiangong without the assistance of other nations. The US excluded China from the International Space Station because of its program’s military ties.

China launched its first astronaut into orbit in 2003, making it only the third country to do so on its own after the former Soviet Union and the US. Its space program has landed robot rovers on the moon and placed one on Mars last year. China has also returned lunar samples and officials have discussed a possible crewed mission to the moon.

The Wentian contains four fridge-size experiment cabinets and 22 external mounting points expected to support a wide range of life sciences and biotechnology experiments. Such experiments include investigating how microgravity and space radiation affect the cultivation of cells, the crystallisation of proteins, and the growth of plants, insects, small mammals and microbes.

Mengtian, the second module, will support more experiments, ranging from fundamental physics to materials science, including the most precise clock in orbit. The atomic clock, developed by Chinese scientists, has the accuracy of losing or gaining one second every 30 billion years.

THE TIMES