China launched the first of three elements of its space station on Thursday, an ambitious project for Beijing that should eventually allow it to have permanent astronauts in space.

The central Tianhe module ("Celestial Harmony"), the future home of astronauts, was propelled by a Long-March 5B rocket from the launch center in Wenchang, on the island of Hainan (south), according to public television CCTV.

President Xi Jinping sent in a telegram his "warm congratulations" to the technical teams, the space station being a "major project to make the country a powerhouse of science, technology and space".

The station "will be a major step forward for Chinese human spaceflight capabilities," Jonathan McDowell, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in the United States told AFP.

"This should allow them to have a permanent human presence in space and therefore significantly increase the experience of their astronauts."

Named in English CSS (for "Chinese Space Station") and in Chinese "Tiangong" ("Heavenly Palace"), it will evolve in low earth orbit (between 340 and 450 km altitude).

Similar to the old Russian-Soviet station "Mir" (1986-2001), its expected service life will be ten to fifteen years.

"It will serve as a base for larger-scale operations: manned missions to the Moon, space tourism, space science or even concrete applications for humans", notes Chen Lan, analyst at GoTaikonauts.com, specializing in the Chinese space program. .

When complete, the CSS should weigh almost 100 tonnes.

For comparison, it will be about three times smaller (in size) than the International Space Station (ISS).

"Competition"

With a length of 16.6 meters and a diameter of 4.2 meters, the "Tianhe" module launched Thursday will be the central element of the future station and will also be its control post.

To finalize the construction of the CSS, China should launch a dozen missions until the end of 2022, some manned, in order to transport and assemble the other two modules.

No specific timeline has been released.

Next steps, however: a cargo vessel, "Tianzhou-2", should be launched and dock at "Tianhe", a priori in May.

Then the "Shenzhou 12" manned mission is due to take astronauts aboard this CSS under construction in June.

With the Chinese CSS and the ISS headed by the American space agency (Nasa), there will therefore be two stations in orbit around the Earth.

“Politically, this symbolizes the strengthening of competition between the United States and China,” notes Chen Lan.

Due to its size and its international cooperation for the moment limited, the Chinese station does not however have the means to be a competitor of the ISS, "which is generally more mature and efficient", estimates Jonathan McDowell.

Beijing said it was open to collaborations with abroad.

Chinese and UN scientists have thus selected experiments by foreign researchers, which will be carried out in the future CSS.

The Moon and Mars

"These visitors will carry out experiments, but they will be more tourists than partners in the operation of the station, unlike, for example, the more active role that Japanese and European astronauts have in the ISS," explains Jonathan McDowell.

"Russia and Pakistan will most likely be the first partners and could be followed by the European Space Agency (ESA)", but this latest collaboration is "very uncertain" because "the political climate has changed a lot", notes Chen Lan, in reference to the tensions around Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

Will foreign astronauts ever climb into CSS?

Perhaps, but no chance of seeing an American there: an American law prohibits NASA from any connection with China.

The Asian giant has been investing billions in its space program for several decades to catch up with Europeans, Russians and Americans.

China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003. The country landed a machine on the far side of the moon in early 2019 - a world first.

Last year, he brought back samples of the Moon and finalized Beidou, his satellite navigation system (competitor of the American GPS).

China plans to land a robot on Mars next month, but also to send humans to the Moon by 2030. It has also announced that it wants to build a lunar base with Russia.

With AFP

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