Farming is in the Chinese DNA — now it has reached orbit.
During the Tiangong Class for Hong Kong & Macau students, astronauts live‑streamed their working space vegetable garden, growing fresh leafy greens inside China’s space station.
Many nations have tried planting plants in space, yet China’s full seed‑to‑seed crop experiments push orbital agriculture to a new level.
No matter on the ground or hundreds of kilometres out in space, the instinct to grow vegetables never switches off. @Bodenviews
Tiangong Space Station
Most North Americans are aware of the ISS International Space Station but perhaps due to lack of mainstream media coverage (not us though) – much less know about the Chinese Space Station or China’s successful landing on the Moon. The Tiangong is the Space Station that China launched in 2019, with a new Crew and Modules going up every 6 months..
It is now 25% bigger than the ISS, and the plans are to equip it with Fuel Tanks several hundred meters away, to facilitate China’s Moonbase construction by 2030 and in case you missed it, there is a new space race brewing- the return to the Moon for the establishment of a permanent Moonbase.
NASA Project Artemis Timeline towards a Moon base
These are the 1st successful attempts at serious “Gardening” in space, with ‘0’ gravity.
The Tiangong provides regular, daily reports to China, and the World’s Media, but as mentioned above, Western media rarely shows any of the advances that would harm the soon to be decommissioned ISS’s reputation but regularly report on any failings. This sort of “soft censorship” has a common occurrence by all space faring nations- such as the fate of the Soviet Soyuz 11 crew who died upon reentry or the failed launch of the Russian N1 Moon Rocket which exploded in all launches (earthquake tremor machines recorded the explosion and the West deduced what had happened).
Tiangong Facts
The Crew always includes one woman, and the current one- Lai Ka-ying hails from Hong Kong, and speaks both Cantonese and Mandarin.. She is a high school teacher, as have been several Taikonauts before her.
For the Silo, Bill Stewart/Jarrod Barker.