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Report: Europe won't send astronauts into China's Tiangong Space Station after all:

The European Space Agency does not have the money nor the political "greenlight" to crewed missions into China's Tiangong orbit station.

Posted by Ilsa Weiß on February 03, 2023

The European Space Agency (ESA), had been preparing its astronauts to fly to China's three-module Tiangong station. ESA's Samantha Cristoforetti (ESA) and Matthias Maurer (ESA) conducted nine days of survival training in August 2017 with 16 of their Chinese counterparts near Yantai.

ESA officials stated that both activities are a result of the 2015 agreement to increase collaboration between ESA, China Manned Space Agency. They also have the goal of flying European astronauts onto the Chinese space station starting in 2022.

"We are very busy supporting, ensuring our commitments, activities on the International Space Station where we have many international partners working together," Josef Aschbacher, Director General of ESA, stated in a press conference last week. Andrew Jones reported in a SpaceNews story published Jan. 25 (opens new tab).

Jones reported that Aschbacher stated that "for the moment, we don't have the budgetary or the political, let’s say, greenlight or intention to engage with a second spacestation -- that is, participating in the Chinese space station."

China began Tiangong construction in April 2021, with the launch Tianhe, the station’s core module. The Wentian side module was launched in July. Tiangong's T-shaped shape was completed with the Mengtian module arriving in October.

To date, Tiangong has hosted four crewed mission to orbiting complexes. Each mission carried three astronauts. All of these visitors were members of China's People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps.

A European visit to Tiangong, despite Aschbacher's recent statements is still more likely than an American one.2011 was the first time that Congress had prohibited NASA from cooperating with China in any significant way without prior authorization. This law, known as The Wolf Amendment, makes it extremely difficult for China to participate, if at all, in the International Space Station program (ISS).

Michael Wall joined Space. com in 2010 as a Senior Space Writer. While he focuses on exoplanets and spaceflight, he has also been known to be interested in the space art beat. His book, "Out There," about the search for alien life was published on November 13, 2018.

Michael was a wildlife biologist and herpetologist before he became a science writer. He holds a Ph. D. from the University of Sydney in Australia in evolutionary biology, a bachelor's from Arizona and a graduate certificate for science writing from the University of California Santa Cruz. Follow Michael on Twitter to find out his latest projects.

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Report: Europe won't send astronauts into China's Tiangong Space Station after all:

The European Space Agency does not have the money nor the political "greenlight" to crewed missions into China's Tiangong orbit station.

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