China has launched three astronauts into its unfinished space station during six months of construction work.
The crew is Chen Dong, Can Xuzhe and Liu Yang, who was the first Chinese woman in space after a previous mission in 2012.
They will work to complete the Tiangong space station later this year, installing two lab modules on opposite sides of the outpost, giving it a T-shape.
The assembly of the orbiting space station, which will be approximately one-fifth the size of the ISS, began last April and is expected to be completed in November after 11 launches.
Image: Chen Dong, Can Xuzhe and Liu Yang will spend six months in space. Image: Reuters
China cannot participate in the ISS following laws passed by the United States Congress restricting NASA’s cooperation with Beijing because of the secrecy of its space program and its close ties to the country’s military.
The U.S. caution regarding China’s space ambitions became law in 2011, through the so-called Wolf Amendment.
Congress banned NASA from using government funds to engage in direct bilateral cooperation with the Chinese government or any organization affiliated with the Chinese government.
The law even prohibits NASA from hosting Chinese delegates at any of its facilities without the permission of Congress and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which leads to counterintelligence.
China’s CMSA manned space agency has “guaranteed” the participation of foreign astronauts in the Tiangong program.
Last year, a government research organization in China outlined plans to design and build “ultra-large,” potentially mile-wide spacecraft that would be slowly assembled into space.
The construction of large space facilities has been done before, with the ISS requiring 40 assembly flights and more than a decade to build it.
But the huge constructions proposed by the National Foundation for Natural Sciences of China would greatly overshadow the ISS, which measures only 357 feet from end to end, and could take decades and potentially centuries to build.
These constructions are described as “key strategic aerospace equipment for the future use of space resources, the exploration of the mysteries of the universe, and long-term orbiting room,” by the NSFC.