China's Shenzhou-13 spacecraft carrying three Chinese asജtronauts docked Saturday at its space station, kicking off a record-setting six-month stay as the country moves toward co🅺mpleting the new orbiting outpost.
China's military-run space programme plans to send multiple crews to the station over the next two years to make it fully functional.
China's Shenzhou-13 spacecraft carrying three Chinese asജtronauts docked Saturday at its space station, kicking off a record-setting six-month stay as the country moves toward co🅺mpleting the new orbiting outpost.
The spacecraf🍷t was launched by a Long March-2F rocket at 12:23 am Saturday and docked with the Tianhe core module of the Tiangong space station at 6:56 am, approximately ꦬsix and a half hours later.
The two men and one woman are the 🌼second crew to move into the space station, which was launched last April. The first crew stayed three months.
The new crew includes two veterans of space travel. Zhai Zhigang, 55, and Wang Yaping, 41, and Ye Gu🔯angfu, 41, who is making his first trip to space.
They were seen off by a military band and supporters singing “Ode to the Motherland,” underscoring the weig꧅ht of national pride invested in the space programme, which has advanced rapidly in recent years.
The crew will do three spacewalks to install equipment in preparation for expanding the station; assess living 𝔍conditions in the Tianhe module and conduct exꦚperiments in space medicine and other fields.
China's military-run space ♛programme plans to send multiple crews to the station ove🐻r the next two years to make it fully functional.
When completed with the addition of two more sectiꦍons — named Mengtian and Wentian — the station will weigh about 66 tons, m♈uch smaller than the International Space Station, which launched its first module in 1998 and weighs around 450 tons.
Two more Chinese modules are due to be launched before the end of next year during the stay of the yet-to-be-named Shenzhꦗou-14 crew.
China's Foreign Ministry on Friday renewed its com🅰mitment to cooperation with other nations in the peaceful u🐎se of space.
Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said sending humans into space was a “common cause of mankind.” China would “continue to extend the depth and breadth of international cooperat🌺ion and exchanges” in crewed spaceflight and “make positive⭕ contributions to the exploration of the mysteries of the universe,” he said.
China was excluded from the International Space Station largely due to US objections overꦓ the Chinese programme's secretive nature and close military ties, prompting it to launch two experimental modules before starting on the permanent station.
US law requires congressional approval for contact between the American and Chinese space programmes, but China is cooperating with space experts from other countries incl𓆉uding France, Sweden, Russia and Itꦑaly. Chinese officials have said they look forward to hosting astronauts from other countries aboard the space station once it becomes fully functional.
China has launched seven crewed missions with a total of 14 astronauts a𓃲board — two have flown twice — since 2003, when it became only the third country after the former Soviet Union and the United States to put a person in space on its own.
China has also expanded its work on lunar and Mars exploration, including landing a rover on the little-explored far side of the Moon and returning lunar rocks to Earth for the first time since the 1970𓄧s.
This year, China also landed its Tianwe𒅌n-1 space probe on Mars, whose accompanying Zhurong rover has been explori🌳ng for evidence of life on the red planet.
Other Chinese space programmes call for collecting soil from an asteroid and briౠnging back additional lunar samples. China has also expressed an aspiration to land people on the moon and possibly build a scientific base there, although no timeline has been proposed for such projects. A highly secretive space plane is also reportedly under development. (AP)