China Advances in Space Technology, to Launch New Space Lab Next Week

China has expressed its intent to become the next "Space Giant" earlier this year. And it looks like the country is true to their word as a new Chinese space laboratory is set for launch next week.

The advanced Chinese space lab is capable of monitoring physics in outer space, studying the behavior of microgravity and observing gamma rays. Reports say that the new Chinese space lab can observe and analyze a total of 10 gamma rays per year.

To become the next super space giant, the Chinese Space Agency are launching one project after the other to prove their capability to dominate the space flight industry. The agency is all set to launch the second space lab Tiangong-2. The Long Mars 2F rocket will send Tiangong-2 to space. Both the space lab and the rocket have been positioned at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and are ready to take flight. The docking of the rocket and the space lab aired live on China. Tiangong-2 is scheduled for launch sometime between Sept. 15 and 20, according to CCTV News.

The Chinese space station will habituate an orbit of 393 kilometers above the Earth. Tiangong-2 is a 60-ton space station and will be a testing ground for life support systems and refueling processes. The new space station will be instrumental in various scientific research including physics, fluid mechanics in space, biology and space science. China will also be able to observe the Earth from space through the space lab.

Tiangong-2 also boasts of the capability to observe gamma ray using its gamma-ray detector POLAR. POLAR is a joint project developed by the collaboration between China, Switzerland and Poland.

But China's ambitious plans don't stop there. The agency plans a rendezvous with the new space station and Tianzhou-1, the first cargo and refueling spacecraft of China.

"The vast majority of space technology being developed is dual-use, and so serves Chinese security interests as well," Johnson-Freese, a professor at the US Naval War College and Chinese space expert said in an interview.

Earlier this year, reports say that China is also building a deep-sea space station underneath the South China Sea.