Details on the telescope(s) on the Chinese Space Station 天和 The ISS has a telescope on board. Does the Chinese Space Station have one on board as well?
I heard about Xuntian aka Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST), but not too many details. Would that be the only telescope? What would be the primary scientific goals?
The Chinese Space Station (CSS) has many instruments. It is planned to conduct a spectroscopic survey of hundreds of millions of galaxies. The Chinese Space Station Optical Survey (CSS-OS) is a planned full sky survey with applications to, e.g., cosmology and photometry. It will &quot;probe weak and strong gravitational lensing, galaxy clustering, individual galaxies and galaxy clusters, active galactic nuclei...&quot; This effort has been in the works for over a decade, e.g., here. There are also many laboratory experiments planned.
The CSS is the culmination of the Tiangong program, which began in 1992, and this is why it's known as the Tiangong Space Station. The word &quot;tiangong&quot; means &quot;heavenly palace.&quot;
Xuntian is a planned telescope that will co-orbit the CSS for periodic docking. It is expected to have a much larger field of view than the Hubble Space Telescope, and may rival the James Webb Telescope.
Keep in mind that the efficacy of Chinese cooperation with international science programs is controversial.