Elijah Williams
Three Chinese taikonauts took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Thursday and left after the Tiangong Space Station to replace three long-term crew who are ending a six-month stay in space.
With veteran Ye Guangfu, 43, at the controls of the Shenzhou 18 spacecraft, flanked by newcomers Li Cong, 34, and Li Guangsu, 36, the Long March 2F rocket roared to life at 8:59 a.m. EDT (8:59 p.m. Beijing). time) and rose gently on a southwestern trajectory corresponding to the station’s orbit.
CCTV
Ye and his companions monitored a 6.5-hour automated rendezvous with the Tiangong station and docked at 3:32 p.m. EDT, joining Shenzhou-17 commander Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie and Jiang Xinlin aboard the orbital outpost.
“My two crew members and I, as well as the entire space mission team, are fully prepared and confident (in our ability) to complete this spaceflight mission,” Ye said in translated comments during a news conference on Wednesday.
Tang and his companions plan to depart and return to Earth with a landing in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on April 30, ending a six-month stay in orbit that began with the October 25 launch.
Shenzhou 18 flight is the seventh flown by China mission to the space station and is the fifth since 24 hour staff started in June 2022. The launch was broadcast live on Chinese television, providing spectacular photos of the rocket’s ascent into space and inside views of the taikonauts as they monitored cockpit displays.
Ye is the only space veteran of the crew, completing a 182-day mission in 2021-22 as part of the Shenzhou 13 mission. Li Cong and Li Guangsu are newcomers on their first flight.
As a novice pilot, Li Guangsu said he was looking forward to traveling at 7.9 meters per second – about 17,500 mph – and “can’t wait” to experience weightlessness.
China Manned Space Agency
“There are no wings, but I can still fly!” he said at the traditional pre-flight press conference. “What a great experience for me. I would also like to take this opportunity to see the blue planet, to have a good look at the wonderful landscape of our motherland.”
During their stay in space, Ye and company will carry out a full series of more than 90 scientific research projects, along with two to three spacewalks to install external experiments, micrometeoroid shielding and other equipment.
Lin Xiqiang, deputy director of the China Manned Space Agency, said the crew will also participate in ongoing science education outreach activities and unload the Tianzhou-8 cargo ship before its Shenzhou 19 replacements arrive in October.
The Chinese space station is made up of three large modules connected in a T-shaped configuration. The Tianhe core module, launched in April 2021, is the centerpiece of the complex, providing crew living quarters, life support systems, communications, spacecraft controls, an airlock and multiple docking ports.
Two other large modules – Wentian and Mengtian – were attached to Tianhe in 2022. The station has a mass of around 100 tons.
The 450-ton International Space Station is made up of more than a dozen pressurized modules supplied by the United States, Russia, the European Space Agency and Japan. Construction began in 1998 and the laboratory has been staffed by rotating teams of astronauts and cosmonauts since 2000. .
CCTV
The Tiangong station has been permanently staffed since June 2022, with the arrival of the Shenzhou 14 crew. Although smaller than the ISS, the Chinese laboratory is newer and equipped with state-of-the-art equipment, computers and instrumentation.
NASA and its partners plan to retire the ISS in 2030, remotely piloting it into a destructive re-entry into the atmosphere above the South Pacific Ocean, well away from shipping lanes and populated areas. This will leave Tiangong as the only government-operated space station in low Earth orbit.
NASA is counting on commercial space stations operated by private companies to provide research opportunities in Earth orbit in the 2030s, as the U.S. agency seeks a return to the moon at the end of this decade with the agency Artemis Program.
China plans to launch its own taikonauts to the Moon starting in 2030, fueling what NASA Administrator Bill Nelson calls a new superpower space race.
“It’s a fact: We’re in a space race,” he told Politico in an interview published last year. “And it’s true that we better be careful that they don’t get to a place on the Moon under the guise of scientific research. And it’s not outside the realm of possibility that they say, ‘stay away, we’re here, this is our territory. .'”
CGTN news agency, citing Lin, said that the Long March-10 lunar rocket, the Mengzhou crew transport spacecraft (Dream Vessel) and the Lanyue lunar module (Embracing the Moon) have completed design reviews and prototypes are currently being tested.
NASA plans its first piloted Artemis mission late next yearlaunching three NASA astronauts and a Canadian aviator on a circular trip around the Moon and back to test the agency’s Orion crew-carrying spacecraft.
CCTV
If all goes well, NASA plans to land astronauts near the Moon’s south pole in 2026-27. But that will depend on SpaceX perfecting its Starship lunar module and Super Heavy booster.
China is in the process of selecting a fourth batch of taikonauts who, according to Lin, will participate in space station activities, as well as upcoming lunar missions.
He repeated comments made before Shenzhou 17’s launch, saying that China, like the United States and its ISS partners, plans to begin dropping flyers from other nations, including space tourists.
“We will accelerate research and promote the participation of foreign astronauts and space tourists in flights with China’s space station,” he said in translated comments published by The Washington Post. “We definitely hope to see astronauts of different identities on China’s space station.”
