Three Chinese astronauts, including China’s only female spaceflight engineer, entered Tiangong Space Station on Wednesday morning after being launched into orbit early in the morning.
The Shenzhou-19 mission departed from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China with three space probes, state-run Xinhua News Agency and state broadcaster CCTV reported.
According to the China Manned Space Administration (CMSA), the crew includes spaceflight engineer Wang Haoze, 34. She is the third Chinese woman to participate in a manned mission.
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The crew met with astronauts from the previous Shenzhou 18 mission, and “a new phase of in-orbit crew handover has begun,” Xinhua News Agency said.
The new Amamiya team will conduct experiments with an eye toward the space program’s goal of placing astronauts on the moon by 2030 and eventually building a lunar base.
The space agency deemed the launch “a complete success,” Xinhua News Agency said, noting that the spacecraft separated from the rocket it was on and entered its intended orbit about 10 minutes after liftoff.
Xinhua later reported that the spacecraft “made a high-speed and automatic rendezvous and docked at the front port of the space station’s core module Tianhe.”
CMSA Deputy Director Lin Shiqiang said at a press conference ahead of the launch that the team will return to Earth in late April or early May next year. The current crew is scheduled to return to Earth on November 4th and have been on the space station for six months.
China’s ambitious space goals
Under President Xi Jinping, China is stepping up plans to realize its “space dream.”
China’s decision to build the space station after being barred from the International Space Station was largely due to U.S. concerns over the overall control of the space program by the Chinese Communist Party’s military wing, the Associated Press said, adding that China He added that the government’s moon program is part of a plan to expand competition with countries such as the United States, including Japan and India.
China is the third country to send humans into orbit and has landed robotic probes on Mars and the moon.
The Tiangong Space Station, manned by a team of three astronauts who rotate every six months, is the crown jewel of the program.
The Chinese government has said its plans to send a manned mission to the moon by 2030 are on track and it intends to build a base on the moon.
To date, the United States is the only country to have landed a manned spacecraft on the moon.
One of the experiments that the Shenzhou 19 crew will conduct while staying in Tiangong involves “bricks” made of components that mimic lunar soil, CCTV reported.
The items are scheduled to be delivered to Tiangong by the Tianzhou 8 cargo ship in November and will be tested to see how they perform under extreme radiation, gravity, temperature and other conditions. is.
Chinese scientists hope to use lunar soil to build future bases, as it is expensive to transport materials into space, CCTV reported.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Agence France-Presse that the Shenzhou 19 mission was primarily aimed at “gathering additional experience.”
While this particular crew’s six-month mission aboard the Tiangong may not show much progress or great accomplishments, it’s still “very valuable work to be done,” McDowell said.
China has spent billions of dollars in recent decades developing an advanced space program on par with those of the United States and Europe.
In 2019, China landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, becoming the first spacecraft ever to do so. In 2021, they landed a small robot on Mars.
Tiangong’s core module will be launched in 2021 and will be used for about 10 years.
