Sixty years after Yuri Gagarin undertook mankind’s first space journey, China launched the core capsule of its space station on Thursday morning, formally embarking on the buildup of one of the humanity’s largest and most sophisticated space-based facilities.

As the countdown ticked down to zero at 11:23 am at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province, 10 engines at the bottom of a Long March 5B heavy-lift carrier rocket roared to life, generating a thrust power of 1,068 metric tons to lift the 18-story-tall vehicle through thick rain clouds covering the coastal city of Wenchang.

China’s most adventurous space endeavor, the multimodule space station, named Tiangong, or Heavenly Palace, will be mainly composed of three components－a core module attached to two space laboratories－with a combined weight of nearly 70 tons.

The core capsule, named Tianhe, or Harmony of Heavens, is 16.6 meters long and has a diameter of 4.2 meters. It has three parts－a connecting section, a life-support and control section and a resources section.

The module will be central to the space station’s future operations, given that astronauts will live there and control the entire station from inside. It will also be used to host scientific experiments.

Thursday’s launch marked the second flight of Long March 5B, the most powerful Chinese rocket when it comes to carrying capacity to low-Earth orbit.
With a core stage and four side boosters, the rocket has a liftoff weight of 849 tons, capable of sending a 25 ton payload to orbits near Earth.

It is now the only rocket in China that can launch Tiangong’s heavy components.

The craft is so big that each of its side boosters is nearly 28 meters tall – the height of a 9-story building — and 3.35 meters wide. Each of them has a thrust power of 240 tons, even stronger than many mid-lift rockets.

To hold huge spacecraft, the rocket has China’s largest payload fairing that is 20.5 meters tall and 5.2 meters wide.

Long March 5B made its debut flight in May 2020 at the Wenchang space complex, deploying the prototype of China’s new-generation manned spacecraft, an experimental cargo retrieval craft as well as more than 10 experimental payloads into low-Earth orbit.