Chinese space station

The Chinese large modular space station, is a planned space station to be placed in Low Earth orbit. The planned Chinese Space Station will be roughly one-sixth the mass of the International Space Station and half the size of the decommissioned Russian Mir Space Station. The Chinese station is expected to have a mass between 60 and 70 metric tons. Operations will be controlled from the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center in China. The planned launching date of the core module, the Tianhe-1 (“Harmony of the Heavens”), is around 2018. In 2017, the Chinese will launch the Tianzhou-1 ("Heavenly Vessel") cargo spaceship, which is based on the Tiangong 1 & 2 space laboratories.

China seeks to enhance the capacity of its scientific and technological capacity. Chinese leaders hope that research conducted on the station will improve researchers' ability to conduct science experiments in space, beyond the duration offered by China's existing space laboratories.

After the United States threatened to use nuclear weapons during the Korean War, Chairman Mao Zedong decided that only a nuclear deterrent of its own would guarantee the security of the newly founded PRC. Thus, Mao announced his decision to develop China's own strategic weapons, including associated missiles. After the launch of mankind's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957, Chairman Mao decided to put China on an equal footing with the superpowers ("我们也要搞人造卫星"), using Project 581 with the idea of putting a satellite in orbit by 1959 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the PRC's founding.

Mao and Zhou Enlai began the PRCs crewed space program on 14 July 1967. China's first manned spacecraft design was named Shuguang-1 (曙光一号) in January 1968. Project 714 was officially adopted in April 1971 with the goal of sending two astronauts into space by 1973 aboard the Shuguang spacecraft. The first screening process for astronauts had already ended on 15 March 1971, with 19 astronauts chosen. The program was soon cancelled due to political turmoil.

The next crewed space program was even more ambitious and was proposed in March 1986 as Project 863. This consisted of a crewed spacecraft (Project 863-204) used to ferry astronaut crews to a space station (Project 863-205). Several spaceplane designs were rejected two years later and a simpler space capsule was chosen instead. Although the project did not achieve its goals, it would ultimately become the 1992 Project 921, encompassing the Shenzhou program, the Tiangong program, and the CSS.

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