As Last Module Docks, China Completes Its Space Station

Re:As Last Module Docks, China Completes Its Space Station by Grimburger on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @05:30PM (#33427804)

> It will operate a space telescope; telescope can dock with the station for servicing and upgrades, and equipment uploaded by regular space station cargo ship.

The co-orbit strategy is excellent, a short trip for repairs and easy to fit into existing schedules if something goes wrong. It's no James Webb but was never intended to be, about the same size as Hubble but with 400x the field of view. Guessing it will be cranking out the discoveries.

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Re:As Last Module Docks, China Completes Its Space Station by orbital-decay on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @07:23PM (#33429187)

It's a great way to have much higher quality microgravity than is possible with a habitable station, in a serviceable module. Low vibration is important for telescopes and some experiments (crystallography in particular). A co-orbiting module was also in the plans for ISS, but like many other planned features it was never implemented.

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Re:As Last Module Docks, China Completes Its Space Station by m4rtink on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @06:19AM (#33433588)

IIRC there were such plans for Space Statio Alpha, ISS or even the European space station plans - it just never got funded in the end.

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