Tiangong is a space station engineered and maintained by the Chinese space agency. Tiangong means ‘heavenly palace’ in Chinese.
Tiangong is large enough for 6 astronauts to live and work there at a time but there is usually a crew of just 3 people on board. It has been home to Chinese astronauts since June 2022.
Occupation: Mathematician and Human Computer
Year born: 1910
Research Areas: Computer Programming
Occupation: Planetary Scientist
Year born: 1959
Research Areas: Jupiter’s Moons, Comets
"I feel like a modern-day explorer; the last frontier is space"
As well as sending people into space, humans have sent robots and space probes all over the Solar System. These have even gone out beyond our Solar System into open space!
What will the future of space exploration hold? At the moment there are more than 70 government space agencies. These include the American agency, NASA and the European agency, ESA. There are also a number of commercial companies, like SpaceX. All of these groups have plans for the next giant leaps forward in space exploration.
The International Space Station (ISS) is a spacecraft large enough for several astronauts to live on at once. It orbits the Earth 400 km above our planet's surface, travelling at 27,600 km/hour. This means it completes 1 orbit of the Earth in 90 minutes! You can sometimes see the ISS at night - you don't need a telescope. It looks like a small, bright dot moving quickly across the sky.
