JIUQUAN, China – A Chinese spacecraft carrying a three-person crew docked at an orbiting space station on Tuesday as China seeks cooperation from other countries but competes with the United States to expand space exploration. .
The team of two men and one woman will replace the astronauts who have been at the Tiangong space station for the past six months, conducting various experiments and maintaining the structure.
He plans to stay there until April or May next year. The new mission commander, Tsai Xuezhe, went to space on the Shenzhou 14 mission in 2022, while the other two, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze, are first-time space travelers. Song and Wang were born in the 1990s and are graduates of China’s third wave of astronaut recruitment, which went through years of rigorous testing and training processes.
Mr. Song was an Air Force pilot, and Mr. Wang was an engineer at the China Aerospace Technology Corporation. Wang will serve as the crew’s payload specialist and become the third Chinese woman to fly on a manned mission.
Early Wednesday morning, China declared the launch and foray into space “a complete success.”
The Shenzhou-19 spacecraft carrying three people was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China at 4:27 a.m. local time (4:27 p.m. ET Tuesday) on the Long March, the backbone of China’s manned space mission. It took off from the top of the rocket on the second floor.
“The crew members are in good condition and the launch was a success,” state broadcaster China Central Television said in a statement.
China built its own space station after being excluded from the International Space Station, largely due to US concerns about overall control of the space program by the Chinese Communist Party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army. China’s moon program is part of increasing competition with the United States and other countries, including Japan and India.
In addition to putting a space station into orbit, the Chinese Space Agency has also landed a probe on Mars. China aims to land a man on the moon by 2030, which would make China the second country after the United States.
There are also plans to build a research station on the moon, the first country in decades to transport rock and soil samples from the moon, and the world’s first spacecraft to be installed on the little-explored far side of the moon. did.
The United States continues to lead in space exploration, with plans to land astronauts on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, but NASA pushed back the target date to 2026 earlier this year.
The new Chinese crew will perform spacewalks and install new equipment to protect the station from space debris, some of which is Chinese-made.
NASA said the large debris was caused by a “satellite explosion and collision.” In 2007, China launched a rocket to destroy surplus weather satellites, and in 2009, an “accidental collision of American and Russian communication satellites” significantly increased the amount of large debris in orbit, the paper said. said.
China’s space authorities said they were taking steps in case astronauts had to return to Earth early.
China launched its first manned mission in 2003, becoming the third country after the former Soviet Union and the United States. The space program is a source of great national pride and a symbol of China’s technological progress over the past two decades.
