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3 astronauts heading back to Earth
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THREE astronauts who lived for 90 days on China’s space station departed yesterday in preparation for returning to Earth.
The national space agency said Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo boarded the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft and undocked from the space station at 8:56am yesterday.
After the separation, the Shenzhou-12 spaceship completed a circumnavigation and radial rendezvous tests at 1:38pm, which successfully verified the radial rendezvous technology and laid an important technical foundation for subsequent manned missions.
State broadcaster CCTV aired footage of the astronauts securing packages inside their spacecraft, which is due to parachute to a location in the Gobi Desert near the Jiuquan launch center today.
The astronauts have already set China’s record for the most time spent in space. After launching on June 17, mission commander Nie and astronauts Liu and Tang went on two spacewalks, deployed a 10-meter mechanical arm, and had a video call with President Xi Jinping.
Before the undocking, the astronauts downloaded data from their experiments and ensured the station would continue operating without a crew, CCTV reported.
The journey home is expected to take at least 30 hours, CCTV said. Before departing, Nie and his colleagues expressed their thanks for the “round-the-clock support and devotion from all the staff.”
Four drills have been conducted on the ground at the Dongfeng landing site in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to ensure the safe return of the crew.
China has sent 14 astronauts into space since 2003, when it became only the third country after the former Soviet Union and the United States to do so on its own.
Tianzhou-3 moved
The Chinese space station, orbiting the Earth at a height of about 400 kilometers, is still under construction. Eight more missions, including three manned operations, are still being arranged to complete the space station.
The combination of the Tianzhou-3 cargo spacecraft and a Long March-7 Y4 carrier rocket has been transferred to the launching area of the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site, the China Manned Space Agency said yesterday.
The CMSA said the Tianzhou-3 cargo spacecraft will be launched in the near future at an appropriate time.
The facilities and equipment at Wenchang are in good condition, and various pre-launch function checks and joint tests will be carried out as planned, the CMSA added.
Tiangong, meaning “heavenly palace,” is expected to last at least 10 years. When completed with the addition of two more modules, the station will weigh in at about 66 tons, while the International Space Station, which launched its first module in 1998, weighs around 450 tons when completed.
China’s space program has advanced in a steady, cautious manner and has largely avoided the failures that marked the US and Russian programs that were locked in intense competition during the heady early days of spaceflight.
China has pushed ahead with un-crewed missions, particularly in lunar exploration. It has placed a rover on the little-explored far side of the Moon and in December, the Chang’e 5 probe returned lunar rocks to Earth for the first time since the 1970s.
China this year also landed its Tianwen-1 space probe on Mars, with its accompanying Zhurong rover venturing out to look for evidence of life.
Another program calls for collecting soil from an asteroid.
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