China's Tiangong Space Station Will Make Several Bright Passes Over the US This Week

China's Tiangong space station — the country's first permanently inhabited orbital outpost — will be visible on several bright, high passes over the eastern United States this week, including from New York City. Three taikonauts are currently aboard Tiangong as part of the Shenzhou-23 mission, which began in May; two of them recently spent 5.5 hours outside the station repairing a solar array.

On a favorable pass, Tiangong can reach a brightness of about magnitude -2, roughly as bright as Jupiter — dimmer than the ISS, but easily visible if skies are clear. The best time to spot it is typically an hour or two after sunset or before sunrise, when the sky is dark but the station, orbiting a few hundred miles overhead, still catches sunlight. New York sits just inside the northern limit of Tiangong's 41.5-degree-inclined orbit, giving observers there some especially high passes.

Tiangong — meaning "Heavenly Palace" — is the second-brightest space station currently in orbit, though at about 100 tons it is only around a quarter of the ISS's mass. It has three main modules: Tianhe, which launched in April 2021, and Wentian and Mengtian, which followed by October 2022. Like the ISS, it orbits Earth roughly every 90 minutes, but a little closer, at about 242 miles altitude compared with the ISS's roughly 254 miles.

The three taikonauts currently aboard are Zhu Yangzhu, Zhang Zhiyuan and Li Jiaying, also known by her Cantonese name Lai Ka-ying. Li Jiaying is expected to remain on the station for about a year — twice the usual six-month rotation.