Their spaceship blasted off atop a Lengthy March-2F provider rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite tv for pc Launch Heart on the sting of the Gobi Desert at 11:08 p.m. Tuesday.
The six-month mission, commanded by Fei Junlong and crewed by Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu, would be the final within the station’s development section, in accordance with the China Manned House Company.
Fei, 57, is a veteran of the 2005 four-day Shenzhou-6 mission, the second time China despatched a human into house. Deng and Zhang are making their first house flights.
The station’s third and closing module docked with the station earlier this month, one of many final steps in China’s greater than decade-long effort to take care of a relentless crewed presence in orbit.
After the Shenzhou-15 spaceship makes an automatic docking with the Tianhe core residing and management module’s entrance port, the station can be expanded to its most measurement, with three modules and three spacecraft connected for a complete mass of practically 100 tons.
Tiangong has room to accommodate six astronauts at a time and the handover will take a couple of week. That may mark the station’s first in-orbit crew rotation.
Earlier missions to the house station have taken about 13 hours from liftoff to docking.
China has not but mentioned what additional work is required to finish the station. Subsequent yr, it plans to launch the Xuntian house telescope, which, whereas not a part of Tiangong, will orbit in sequence with the station and might dock often with it for upkeep.
With out the connected spacecraft, the Chinese language station weighs about 66 tons — a fraction of the Worldwide House Station, which launched its first module in 1998 and weighs round 465 tons.
With a lifespan of 10 to fifteen years, Tiangong may someday be the one house station nonetheless up and working if the Worldwide House Station retires within the coming years as deliberate.
Whereas China’s crewed house program is formally three many years previous this yr, it actually acquired underway in 2003, when China turned solely the third nation after the U.S. and Russia to place a human into house utilizing its personal assets.
This system is run by the ruling Communist Get together’s army wing, the Folks’s Liberation Military, and has proceeded nearly completely with out exterior assist. The U.S. excluded China from the Worldwide House Station due to its program’s army ties, though China has engaged in restricted cooperation with different nations’ house companies.
China has additionally chalked up successes with uncrewed missions, with its Yutu 2 rover the primary to discover the little-known far facet of the moon.
China’s Chang’e 5 probe additionally returned lunar rocks to Earth for the primary time because the Nineteen Seventies in December 2020, and one other Chinese language rover is looking for proof of life on Mars.
Officers are reporting contemplating an eventual crewed mission to the moon, though no timeline has been supplied, whilst NASA presses forward with its Artemis lunar exploration program that goals to ship 4 astronauts across the moon in 2024 and land people there as early as 2025.
Whereas continuing easily for essentially the most half, China’s house program has additionally drawn controversy. Beijing dismissed complaints that it has allowed rocket phases to fall to Earth uncontrolled after NASA accused it of “failing to fulfill accountable requirements concerning their house particles.” In that case, components of a Chinese language rocket landed within the Indian Ocean.
China can be reportedly growing a extremely secret house aircraft and its growing house capabilities function within the newest Pentagon protection technique, which mentioned this system was a part of China’s “holistic method to joint warfare.”
