The first astronauts arrived at China’s new space station on Thursday in the longest manned mission in history, marking a key milestone in Beijing’s rise as a major space power.
The trio lifted off aboard a Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwestern China’s Gobi desert, and about seven hours later their spacecraft docked with the Tiangong station. They will spend the next three months at the station.
State television CCTV broadcast live from inside the spacecraft during the journey. After entering orbit, the three astronauts raised their helmet visors, one of them smiling and waving at the camera. The other floated weightlessly with a pen in his lap, flipping through the flight manual.
About seven hours after launch, space officials confirmed that the spacecraft had docked with Tianhe, the main module of the country’s new space station.
The Shenzhou-12 spacecraft has “successfully docked to the forward port of the main module” of the Tiangong station, China’s manned space agency said, with state television broadcasting live footage. At the pre-launch ceremony, the three astronauts, already wearing spacesuits, greeted a crowd of supporters and space workers who chanted patriotically “Without the Chinese Communist Party, there would be no new China.”
The mission commander is Ni Haisheng, a highly decorated pilot from the People’s Liberation Army Air Force who has already participated in two space missions. The other two members are also in the military.
cosmic life
The space station’s Tianhe module includes separate accommodation for each of the astronauts, a “space treadmill” and stationary bike, and a communications center for email and video calls to Earth.
This is the first flight by a Chinese manned spacecraft in almost five years. Weifeng Huang, a spokesman for China’s manned space program, said the astronauts will perform two spacewalks during the flight, both lasting six to seven hours. He also said that the trio will wear newly developed spacesuits for the spacewalk.
The launch is a high-profile affair in China, as Beijing prepares to celebrate the ruling Communist Party’s 100th anniversary on July 1 with a major propaganda campaign. To prepare for the flight, the crew completed more than 6,000 hours of training, including hundreds of underwater somersaults in full spacesuits.
The Chinese space agency plans a total of 11 launches by the end of next year, including three additional crewed missions to deliver two 70-tonne station extension laboratory modules, as well as supplies and crew members.
China’s space ambitions are fueled, in part, by a US ban on removing astronauts from the International Space Station, a collaboration between the United States, Russia, Canada, Europe and Japan. It was supposed to be decommissioned after 2024, though NASA said it could remain in service until 2028.
Tiangong will be much smaller than the ISS and should last at least 10 years. China has said it is open to international cooperation on its space station, but has yet to provide specific details.
Zhou Jianping, chief designer of the space program, said: “Undoubtedly, one day foreign astronauts will reach the Chinese space station. Several countries have expressed their desire to do so and we will be open to this possibility in the future.”
In March, Beijing said it was also looking into the possibility of building an independent lunar space station with Russia, and this week the two countries published a roadmap on possibilities for cooperation.
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Categories: Technology
Source: vtt.edu.vn