China launched the last module of its Tiangong space station

China has launched the third and final module of its Tiangong ("Heavenly Palace") orbital space station. It took the Celestial Empire more than ten years to build it. The Mentian module was launched from the Wenchang launch site in Hainan province in the south of the country in the presence of a large number of photographers and space enthusiasts who watched the takeoff from nearby beaches..

Like its predecessors, Mentian will be carried to the station by a Long March-5B Y4 rocket. According to the China Space Agency, the module will spend 13 hours in flight before docking with Tiangong.

"Mengtian" or "Heavenly Dream" will be the second laboratory module after the first "Wentian" and the third after "Tianhe," where a crew of three astronauts, two men and a woman, now reside and work. Chen Dong, Cai Xiuzhe and Liu Yang arrived at the station in early June as part of a six-month expedition. Their tasks include completing station assembly, spacewalks and related experiments.

Following Mentian, the Tianzhou cargo ship will arrive at the station in November, and another crew of three will visit Tiangong in December.