Beijing has just taken a new step in its conquest of space.

China launched the first of three elements of its space station on Thursday, the construction of which will require around ten missions until the end of 2022.

The central Tianhe module, which means Celestial Harmony, the future home of astronauts, was propelled by a Long-March 5B rocket from the Wenchang launch center, on the tropical island of Hainan in the south of the country, according to television. public 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 power of science, technology and space".

A station similar to "Mir"

The station will indeed be "a major breakthrough" for China, recognizes Jonathan McDowell, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in the United States. "This should allow it to have a permanent human presence in space and therefore significantly increase the experience of its 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 former Russian-Soviet station "Mir" (1986-2001), its expected service life will be 10-15 years.

The station "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 the GoTaikonauts site, specializing in the Chinese space program.

When complete, the CSS should weigh almost 100 tonnes.

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

A manned flight in June

The Tianhe module launched on 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 around ten missions until the end of 2022, some of which are manned.

No specific timeline has been released.

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

Then the manned mission "Shenzhou 12" must take astronauts on board this CSS under construction in June.

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