Shenzhou-9's crew return about 10am
By Yang Jian |
June 29, 2012, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
CHINA'S Shenzhou-9 spacecraft and its crew of three will land in Inner Mongolia at around 10am today.
It separated from the orbiting Tiangong-1 lab module around 7am yesterday, the first time such a disconnection had been carried out manually.
Liu Wang conducted the operation and continued manually steering the spacecraft to a safe distance from the lab module, the Beijing Aerospace Control Center said.
The spacecraft was then ready to begin its flight back to Earth.
A return module with the three astronauts on board - Liu Wang, Jing Haipeng and Liu Yang, China's first woman in space - will separate from the spacecraft before it enters Earth's atmosphere.
Parachutes will help reduce the speed of the module as it falls and a rocket will fire to further slow it shortly before landing.
Seven helicopters are on standby in the vicinity of landing area on grassland of Inner Mongolia's Siziwang Banner ready to look for the module after it comes down.
"The helicopters have been equipped with China's Beidou navigation satellite system to send back the position of the module to the Beijing control center," said Cui Xiaojun, deputy commander for the landing mission.
The return module will be sending signals to the helicopters during landing, so they will be able to gauge its position while it is still in the air, Cui said.
Wu Ping, a spokeswoman for China's manned space program, said an upgraded video monitoring system had been installed around the landing zone to transmit details to the control center in Beijing. China Central Television will broadcast the landing process.
A medical helicopter will pick the astronauts up and carry out health checks.
A separate cabin with two female medical workers has been prepared for Liu Yang, Cui said.
All of the previous eight Shenzhou spacecraft have landed in the sparsely populated area.
All nearby mobile phone towers and high voltage cables will stop working for a day to avoid disturbing transmissions from the return module.
Traffic will also be restricted.
A hospital has been placed on standby for any emergency.
Wu said it was possible the astronauts would suffer some ill effects from being weightless in space and they would need time to readapt to Earth?s gravity.
Weather conditions in north China will be favorable for the landing, forecasters in the area said.
The sky will be clear and temperatures will be around 17 to 21 degrees Celsius.
It had been raining with some thunder in the landing zone from Wednesday to yesterday, but conditions were improving and would meet the requirements of the landing.
The astronauts on Shenzhou-9 successfully carried out the country?s first manual space docking procedure on Sunday with Tiangong-1.
All experiments and tests had been completed on schedule and produced valuable data, Chen Shanguang, chief commander of the mission?s astronaut system, said.
It separated from the orbiting Tiangong-1 lab module around 7am yesterday, the first time such a disconnection had been carried out manually.
Liu Wang conducted the operation and continued manually steering the spacecraft to a safe distance from the lab module, the Beijing Aerospace Control Center said.
The spacecraft was then ready to begin its flight back to Earth.
A return module with the three astronauts on board - Liu Wang, Jing Haipeng and Liu Yang, China's first woman in space - will separate from the spacecraft before it enters Earth's atmosphere.
Parachutes will help reduce the speed of the module as it falls and a rocket will fire to further slow it shortly before landing.
Seven helicopters are on standby in the vicinity of landing area on grassland of Inner Mongolia's Siziwang Banner ready to look for the module after it comes down.
"The helicopters have been equipped with China's Beidou navigation satellite system to send back the position of the module to the Beijing control center," said Cui Xiaojun, deputy commander for the landing mission.
The return module will be sending signals to the helicopters during landing, so they will be able to gauge its position while it is still in the air, Cui said.
Wu Ping, a spokeswoman for China's manned space program, said an upgraded video monitoring system had been installed around the landing zone to transmit details to the control center in Beijing. China Central Television will broadcast the landing process.
A medical helicopter will pick the astronauts up and carry out health checks.
A separate cabin with two female medical workers has been prepared for Liu Yang, Cui said.
All of the previous eight Shenzhou spacecraft have landed in the sparsely populated area.
All nearby mobile phone towers and high voltage cables will stop working for a day to avoid disturbing transmissions from the return module.
Traffic will also be restricted.
A hospital has been placed on standby for any emergency.
Wu said it was possible the astronauts would suffer some ill effects from being weightless in space and they would need time to readapt to Earth?s gravity.
Weather conditions in north China will be favorable for the landing, forecasters in the area said.
The sky will be clear and temperatures will be around 17 to 21 degrees Celsius.
It had been raining with some thunder in the landing zone from Wednesday to yesterday, but conditions were improving and would meet the requirements of the landing.
The astronauts on Shenzhou-9 successfully carried out the country?s first manual space docking procedure on Sunday with Tiangong-1.
All experiments and tests had been completed on schedule and produced valuable data, Chen Shanguang, chief commander of the mission?s astronaut system, said.
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