Space pair at their home for next 30 days
Print Edition
TWO Chinese astronauts entered China’s orbiting space station for a monthlong stay early yesterday, with the nation’s sixth and longest manned mission underway in earnest.
The pair’s Shenzhou-11 spacecraft, that blasted off early on Monday morning from the Gobi Desert, docked with the Tiangong-2 station using an automated maneuver worked out during missions to an earlier experimental station.
It began an automatic approach toward Tiangong-2 at 1:11am and completed the docking procedure just over two hours later.
Sun Jun, deputy chief engineer of the Beijing Aerospace Control Center, said the precision needed for orbital predictions and automated docking calculations was much higher than previous docking missions.
The space station launched on September 15 is orbiting about 393 kilometers above the Earth.
Having changed from his space suit into blue overalls, veteran mission commander Jing Haipeng opened the hatch between the two modules and entered Tiangong-2 shortly after 6am, followed by Chen Dong, who is on his first journey into space.
The two astronauts contacted Beijing to extend greetings to all the people of the nation from the space lab, and checked the status of the space complex.
The current mission is an example of the growing sophistication of the country’s manned program that first launched a human into space 13 years ago.
During their 30-day stay in the two-module complex, the astronauts will conduct experiments in medicine and space-related technologies, and test systems and processes in preparation for the launching of the station’s core module in 2018. A fully functioning space station is on course to begin full operations six years from now and is expected to run for at least a decade.
The Tiangong, or “Heavenly Palace,” stations are stepping stones to a mission to send a rover to Mars by the end of the decade. Communication with Tiangong-1 has been cut and it is expected to burn up on entering the atmosphere next year.
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