Tiangong space station

Rare card · No. 37987

The Tiangong space station (Chinese: 天宫; pinyin: Tiāngōng; lit. 'Heavenly Palace'), officially the China Space Station (CSS) in English, is China's first permanently crewed space station, in low Earth orbit since 2021. Operated by the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), it is China's third space station, under the Tiangong subprogram of the China Manned Space Program. A space laboratory, it hosts experiments on bioastronautics, microgravity, materials science and space technology. Crews of three travel aboard the Shenzhou spacecraft for missions of about six months, with temporary crew sizes of six during handovers. Cargo missions use the Tianzhou spacecraft. It is one of two operational space stations, alongside the International Space Station (ISS). When China formally requested to join the ISS program in 2007, Roscosmos and the European Space Agency (ESA) supported cooperation with China, but the Wolf Amendment, enacted by the United States since 2011, prohibited Chinese participation...

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