Development Of China's Space Exploration "impressive", Says Australian Scientist

Development of China's space exploration "impressive", says Australian scientist

CANBERRA, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Jun, 2021 ) :-- The development of China's space exploration in the past years has been "impressive", said an Australian scientist on Friday.

China was "catching up very fast and may be able to leapfrog in some ways," said Prof. Paul Francis, an astrophysicist at The Australian National University when speaking of China's successful launch of the crewed spacecraft Shenzhou-12 on Thursday.

He told Xinhua that on the one hand, the move was important to inspiring the young people. On the other hand, it paved the way for future space missions.

After its launch, Shenzhou-12 manned spaceship successfully docked with the core module Tianhe of China's space station on Thursday.

Francis said that sending the astronauts to the space station would allow China to "start exploring basically the medicine of space, and other technology needed to keep people alive in a small metal box in space to understand better the effects on the health of the astronauts".

He said he believes that this is important to further explorations. "It will be useful for future moon missions or Mars missions or further afield," he said. "You need to understand how they can survive in zero gravity. You need to work on the technology of how you keep them alive, keep the air clean, keep the water and food."