Imagine walking about the length of 11 football fields. Now imagine a spaceship that long!

China just announced a plan to build a spaceship that would be more than half a mile long. If it succeeds, the spaceship will be the largest to ever orbit, or travel around, Earth.

The spaceship would be a place to learn how to live and work in space. There would be a lot of room for experiments too. And it could serve as a launch point for future missions to space.

Michael Shara studies stars at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He is excited about the ship for another reason.

“It could hold a telescope so big, we’d discover more new planets in outer space than ever before,” Shara says.