Skip to main content

China will study how to build a massive spacecraft over a half-mile long

The Chinese government is inviting scientists to help build an enormous, 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) long spacecraft that it wants to construct in orbit. The wild concept is to build a giant orbiting craft the size of 10 city blocks from components sent up by rockets one piece at a time.

The concept is outlined in a project document from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (in the attachment titled “Guide for major projects of the Ministry of Mathematical Sciences”), which describes how the organization is looking for proposals for constructing an “ultra-large spacecraft with a size of one kilometer,” saying this goal represents “a major strategic aerospace equipment for the future use of space resources, exploration of the mysteries of the universe, and long-term living in orbit.”

A Long March-2F rocket.
The Long March-2F rocket that will launch three Chinese astronauts to a new space station in the country’s first crewed launch in five years. STR/Getty Images

The size and mass of such a spacecraft would obviously be huge, which would make it impossible to build and launch in one piece. Instead, the idea would be to design and construct modules that could each be launched individually and then assembled in orbit. Therefore the project is looking for two key factors: Firstly, a lightweight design to keep the number of required launches as low as possible, and secondly, a smart design that can be assembled easily in space.

Recommended Videos

This will be a five-year project to develop the concept, according to the South China Morning Post, and five projects will be selected for development at 15 million yuan ($2.3 million U.S.) each. This amount of funding presumably represents just the first step in researching the concept, as it is nowhere near enough to actually build and launch a spacecraft — even a tiny one. It must be for preliminary research only, to see whether such a concept is even feasible.

China has stepped into space exploration in a big way in recent years. In addition to its Tianwen-1 mission to Mars, which includes a rover that China landed successfully on Mars for the first time and which recently had its mission extended, there’s also its Chang’e 4 mission to the far side of the moon which brought home a sample of lunar rock for the first time in over 40 years. And perhaps most significantly, there is China’s new space station which had its first module put into orbit earlier this year, and which has already seen its first cargo mission and two spacewalks.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
U.S. spacecraft lands on the moon for the first time in over 50 years
Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lander heads to the moon.

The U.S. company Intuitive Machines made a historic landing on the moon today. Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lander, launched earlier this month, touched down on the moon's surface at 6:23 p.m. ET, marking the U.S.'s first lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972 and the first landing on the moon by a commercial entity.

The Odysseus lander is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which provides contracts to companies for lunar services, and it carries a number of NASA scientific instruments. It has landed on the moon's south pole, which is an area of particular scientific interest as it hosts water ice and is the region where NASA plans to land astronauts under its Artemis program.

Read more
One last orbit: how and why NASA kills its own spacecraft
An artist's rendition of the NEOWISE spacecraft shows it in orbit above the earth.

For more than a decade, NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) mission has been searching the sky for near-Earth objects. Using its infrared vision, the spacecraft, which sits in orbit above Earth's surface, has looked out for asteroids and comets throughout the solar system and has been used to identify those that could come close to Earth.

You might recognize the name because it was used for one of the mission's discoveries, comet NEOWISE, which was the brightest comet in over 20 years when it zipped past Earth in 2020.

Read more
NASA’s Juno spacecraft to pass within 1,000 miles of volcanic moon Io
This image revealing the north polar region of the Jovian moon Io was taken on October 15 by NASA’s Juno. Three of the mountain peaks visible in the upper part of image, near the day-night dividing line, were observed here for the first time by the spacecraft’s JunoCam.

NASA's Juno spacecraft, currently in orbit around Jupiter, will soon be making a close flyby of one of the planet's most dramatic moons, Io. On Saturday, December 30, Juno will come within 1,000 miles of Io, making it the closest spacecraft to that moon in the last 20 years.

Io is an intriguing place because it shows signs of significant volcanic activity, making it the most geologically active body in the solar system. It hosts over 400 active volcanoes, which periodically erupt due to hot magma inside the moon created by friction caused by the gravitational pull between Jupiter and its other large moons.

Read more