BEIJING (AP) – A Chinese spacecraft returned to Earth Tuesday carrying three astronauts after a six-month mission aboard the country’s orbiting space station.
Shenzhou 17, carrying Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie and Jiang Xinlin, landed at Dongfeng Base in northern China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the Gobi Desert shortly before 6 p.m. Their three replacements.
China is your own space station It was removed from the International Space Station, largely due to U.S. concerns about the Chinese military’s total control of the space program amid an intensifying technological competition between the two geopolitical rivals. This year, two cargo spacecraft missions and two manned spaceflight missions are scheduled for the China station.
China’s ambitious space program Aims to land astronauts on the moon by 2030which will return samples from Mars around the same year and launch three lunar missions over the next four years.
The new crew members are veteran astronaut Commander Ye Guangfu (43 years old) who participated in the Shenzhou 13 mission in 2021, and fighter pilots Li Cong (34 years old) and Li Guangsu, both newcomers to space flight. (36 years old).
They will spend about six months in three modules of the Tiangong space station, which can accommodate up to six astronauts at a time. During their stay, they will conduct science tests, install space debris protectors, conduct payload experiments, and teach beam science classes to students on Earth.
China has said it plans to do so eventually. Provide access to the space station for foreign astronauts and space tourists. The ISS is nearing the end of its useful life, and China may eventually become the only country or company to maintain a manned station in orbit.
China conducted its first manned space mission in 2003, becoming the third country after the former Soviet Union and the United States to use its own resources to send people into space. Tiangong was launched in 2021 and completed 18 months later.
The US space program is still considered to have a significant advantage over China in terms of spending, supply chains, and capabilities. However, China has managed to resolve the situation in some areas and has brought back samples from the moon for the first time in decades. land the rover The far side of the moon is less explored.
The United States aims to return crews to the moon by the end of 2025 as part of a new commitment to human missions, with support from private companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin.
