THE NEW SPACE RACE: 1,000 days in space! Core module of China’s Tiangong space station hits milestone.

The landmark highlights the technological and engineering capabilities of China’s space industry, which has greatly expanded its activities in recent years.

China aims to keep Tiangong operating for at least a decade. Starting with Shenzhou 12 in 2021, six crewed missions have visited Tianhe and been kept comfortable by its life support systems and sleeping quarters. The current occupants are the Shenzhou 17 crew, who are just over halfway through their six-month-long mission aboard Tiangong.

A video released by China’s human spaceflight agency to mark the milestone shows clips of the launch, views of Earth from orbit, the interior of Tianhe, including working and personal areas, various Shenzhou mission astronauts at work, and a microgravity science laboratory cabinet.

Tiangong is just 20% as massive as the 460-ton International Space Station (ISS), but its presence provides another human outpost for science in orbit. Tiangong also contributed to a new record of 17 people in orbit at one time, set in May 2023.

China is, however, planning to expand Tiangong beyond its basic, three-module configuration with further modules.

NASA doesn’t have much of a plan for what will replace the ISS, set to be “deorbited in a controlled manner” around 2030.