China Is Making An Ultra-Large Spacecraft – And It Could Span Miles

Almost every week and every day, there comes a new surprising development in space projects being executed all around the world. These projects exhibit uniqueness, smartness, and ambition with the use of technology. Space organizations everywhere are working on the same objective of accessing space and retrieving more information than known before about the area.

In this race, China is one of the leading and dominating names and according to the South China Morning Post, it is now working on building an “ultra-large spacecraft.” This spacecraft will be colossal in size and it could have a span of multiple miles.

A Long March-2F carrier rocket, carrying the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft for the first Chinese crewed mission to its new space station, sits behind the characters for China at a satellite launch centre in the Gobi Desert on June 16. Photo: AFP

The concept has been put forward and even though the execution will require quite a number of years till completion, the National Natural Science Foundation of China is asking scientists and researchers of the country to start working on the preliminary ideas and plans for the machine.

The plan may seem too advanced to be true, but China has always brought new concepts and pulled through. Therefore, people are believing it can deliver this as well. With the help of this spacecraft, more time in space could be spent. According to the SCMP, this spacecraft is one of the five projects the country aims to work on. Each project will receive funding of around $2.3 million.

It is explained that sending a spacecraft of this massive size with the help of a single rocket launch will not be possible. Therefore, separate modules will be sent there, and these modules will be assembled together in the orbit later. The mass will be kept down, and it will also be made sure that no part breaks in the process.

Before the announcement of this project, China has established the first module of the Tiangong space station with four Chinese astronauts already sent there. More are going to follow soon. Tiangong has a weight of about 100 tons which is one-fourth of that of the International Space Station.

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