Gleam me up, Scotty: Chinese space station will rely on LEDs for all light

China is shining a new light on space exploration - quite literally.

Not only has the nation pioneered the use of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in space, its first space station in the Tiangong programme - scheduled for completion in 2022 - will set a new milestone by relying exclusively on them for illumination.

LEDs will provide all the light on the 60-tonne structure, from the soft tones of the astronauts' bedside lamps to the large and powerful spotlights used to illuminate missions such as spacewalks and docking.

Thanks to their compact size, light weight, long life and energy efficiency, LEDs are today found just about everywhere on earth, from smartphones to solar-powered street lamps.

But it was China's space programme that pioneered their use above the earth, according to a recent report by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

LEDs, which use semiconductors to produce light, were invented in the early 1960s. They debuted in space nearly 50 years later, when China's manned spacecraft Shenzhou 7 carried three astronauts to undertake the first Chinese spacewalk in 2008.

Since then, mainland space scientists and engineers have expanded the use of LEDs to include everything from illuminating spacecraft for rendezvous to lighting the tutorials recorded by China's first woman astronaut, Liu Yang , which were beamed via satellite to students on earth.