Unit 7 Section 4 Focusing on culture

Tiangong China’s space station

Chinese people have long dreamt of exploring space. In 2022, China finished building a space station called Tiangong ("Heavenly Palace”). The name comes from ancient Chinese legends about the sky.

The most important part of Tiangong space station is called Tianhe ("Harmony of Heavens”). It was sent into space on 29 April 2021. Just a few weeks after it arrived at its destination, Tianhe got its first visitor—the Tianzhou-2 spacecraft. The spacecraft delivered fuel, equipment, tools and supplies for the astronauts. At this point, the space station was ready to receive human visitors. Seven weeks later, the first three astronauts arrived at Tianhe on Shenzhou-12. The crew spent three months testing equipment and preparing it for future astronauts. Since then, several more Shenzhou crews have visited Tiangong, and two more lab modules (Wentian and Mengtian) have been added.

Astronauts on space missions are always very busy. They need to do important experiments and collect scientific data. But it is definitely an amazing experience. The astronauts get to go on spacewalks, and they can see the sun rise 16 times in one day because Tiangong travels at about 28,000 kilometres an hour. That means it only takes about 90 minutes to go around the Earth!

At a height of about 400 kilometres above the Earth, Tiangong passes across the sky. We do not need any special tools to see it: the space station can be seen from most parts of the world with the naked eye. If you know when and where to look, you will see a tiny shiny object moving across the night sky.