China Space Day Highlights: Space Station Tour plus New Mars & Moon Missions
China just celebrated its 11th Space Day in Chengdu. Visitors stepped into a life-size replica of the Tianhe, the foundational core module of China’s Tiangong Space Station. They got to experience the exact layout used by astronauts in orbit, from the straps to move through cabins to the specialized space kitchen.
Meanwhile, scientists are revealing a new lunar mineral found in soil returned by the Chang’e-5 mission. Named Changesite-(Y), these column-shaped crystals are very tiny, about one-third to one-thirtieth the thickness of a human hair. This discovery, the fourth lunar mineral identified by China, gives experts a new “fingerprint” to understand how the Moon evolved.
China’s space agency also laid out its plan for the next five years, including flight tests for reusable launchers. Five collaborative projects for the Tianwen-3 Mars mission were selected, featuring payloads like spectrometers and laser arrays developed with partners from Italy, Hong Kong SAR, and Macau SAR to search for life and map Martian resources.
China’s lunar program has officially gone global, with the upcoming Chang’e-8 mission set to carry payloads from 11 countries across four continents, while the Chang’e-5 lunar samples have been granted to researchers from six nations for international scientific study.
Chengdu is the capital city of the Chinese southwestern province of Sichuan.
Duration: 2 minutes, 23 seconds
Release Date: April 24, 2026
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