List of Spacecraft From The Space Odyssey Series - Tsien

The Tsien was a fictional Chinese spacecraft - named after Chinese rocket engineer Tsien Hsue-shen - that was featured in the novel 2010: Odyssey Two, but did not appear in the film 2010. During the course of the novel, the Tsien, a new Chinese Earth-orbiting space station, unexpectedly leaves on a secret mission to Jupiter. After burning all of its fuel to reach Jupiter before the Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the Tsien makes a perfect landing on Europa, prompting China to lay claim to the moon. The character Heywood Floyd interprets their actions as an attempt by the Chinese to use Europa as a refuelling point, after which they can rendezvous with Discovery One and the alien artifact at the Io-Jupiter L1 point before the joint Russian-American team. Before it can leave Europa, the ship is destroyed by the primitive life dwelling beneath the surface of the moon.