The T-shaped structure of the China Space Station. /China Manned Space Agency
China's space station, the Harmony operating system (OS) developed by Huawei and Baihetan Hydropower Station in southwest China, have been selected as Global Top 10 Engineering Achievements 2023.
The results were finalized through a global collection of nominations, expert selection and recommendations, a public questionnaire and deliberation by the selection committee, according to a report published on Wednesday in Engineering, the flagship journal of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE).
The China Space Station
The China Space Station completed in-orbit assembly and construction in November 2022 after 11 launch missions.
Composed of three modules and having a total mass of 67.5 tonnes in orbit, the space station can accommodate six astronauts for short-term residence and three for long-term residence.
The completion and operation of China's space station will provide broader prospects and opportunities for human exploration and the development of space, according to the report.
Huawei's Harmony OS
Huawei released a completely new distributed OS, the Harmony OS, on August 9, 2019.
With a microkernel and scenario-oriented design, the OS applies a distributed architecture to a terminal OS for the first time to achieve a seamless cross-terminal collaborative experience for users.
An image depicting Huawei's HarmonyOS 4 operating system, August 4, 2023. /CFP
Baihetan Hydropower Station
All units of Baihetan Hydropower Station, located in the lower main stream of China's Jinsha River, commenced generating electricity on December 20, 2022.
Containing 16 water turbine generating units, each with a capacity of one million kilowatts, Baihetan and five other hydropower stations combined constitute the world's largest clean energy corridor, spanning 1,800 km on the Yangtze River.
Baihetan Hydropower Station in southwest China's Sichuan Province, July 21, 2023. /CFP
ChatGPT, the exascale supercomputer Frontier, NASA's double asteroid redirection test (DART), the RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine, Boston Dynamics' Spot and Atlas robots, the high-quality lithium-ion power battery and the widely-used unmanned aircraft have also been included in this list.
An undated handout illustration showing NASA's DART spacecraft before impact with the Didymos binary asteroid system. /Reuters
Boston Dynamics' Spot at a freight station in Bischofsheim, Hesse, Germany, September 20, 2023. /CFP
Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot Atlas climbs stairs. /Boston Dynamics
These projects comprise major achievements in engineering science and technology innovation that have been successfully and effectively implemented in the past five years from all over the world and that have global influence, according to the report.
The achievements demonstrate remarkable innovation in system integration, have a wide range of application scenarios and set the course for future technological progress, it added.
(With input from Xinhua)