China's space station gets new crew as Beijing advances Xi's "space dream"

Three Chinese astronauts including the country's lone pistillate spaceflight technologist entered the Tiangong abstraction presumption Wednesday greeting pursuing an aboriginal greeting motorboat into orbit.

The Shenzhou-19 ngo took disconnected with its trio of abstraction explorers from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center successful northwest China, authorities quality bureau Xinhua and authorities broadcaster CCTV reported.

Among the unit is Wang Haoze, 34, the spaceflight engineer, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). She is the 3rd Chinese pistillate to instrumentality portion successful a crewed mission.

A agelong March-2F bearer rocket carrying the Shenzhou-19 spacecraft and unit of 3 astronauts lifts disconnected from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, successful the Gobi desert, northwest China, connected Oct. 30, 2024. ADEK BERRY / AFP via Getty Images

The unit met with the astronauts from the erstwhile Shenzhou-18 mission, "starting a caller circular of in-orbit unit handover," Xinhua said.

The caller Tiangong squad volition transportation retired experiments with an oculus toward the abstraction program's extremity of placing astronauts connected the Moon by 2030 and yet constructing a lunar base.

The abstraction bureau deemed the motorboat a "complete success," Xinhua said, noting that the spaceship separated from the rocket it was connected and entered its designated orbit astir 10 minutes aft taking off.

Xinhua aboriginal said the spaceship had "made a fast, automated rendezvous and docking with the beforehand larboard of the abstraction station's halfway module Tianhe."

The squad volition instrumentality to Earth successful precocious April oregon aboriginal May adjacent year, CMSA Deputy Director Lin Xiqiang said astatine a property lawsuit up of the launch. The existent unit is scheduled to instrumentality to Earth connected November 4. They've been connected the abstraction presumption for six months.

China's ambitious abstraction goals

China has ramped up plans to execute its "space dream" nether President Xi Jinping.

It constructed a abstraction presumption aft being kept retired of the International Space Station, mostly owed to U.S. concerns implicit the Chinese Communist Party's subject arm's wide power implicit the abstraction program, The Associated Press points out, adding that Beijing's satellite programme is portion of a increasing rivalry with the U.S. and others, Japan and India among them.

China was the 3rd federation to enactment humans successful orbit and has landed robotic rovers connected Mars and the moon.

Crewed by teams of 3 astronauts that are rotated each six months, the Tiangong abstraction presumption is the program's crown jewel.

Beijing says it's connected way to nonstop a crewed ngo to the Moon by 2030, wherever it intends to conception a basal connected the lunar surface.

Only the U.S. has landed a crewed spacecraft connected the satellite truthful far.  

One experimentation the Shenzhou-19 crew's clip aboard Tiangong is scheduled to transportation retired involves "bricks" made from components imitating lunar soil, CCTV reported.

These items -- to beryllium delivered to Tiangong by the Tianzhou-8 cargo vessel successful November -- volition beryllium tested to spot however they fare successful utmost radiation, gravity, somesthesia and different conditions.

Due to the precocious outgo of transporting materials into space, Chinese scientists anticipation to beryllium capable to usage lunar ungraded for the operation of the aboriginal base, CCTV reported.

The Shenzhou-19 ngo is chiefly astir "accumulating further experience," Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer astatine the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Agence France-Presse.

While this peculiar crew's six-month stint aboard Tiangong whitethorn not witnesser large breakthroughs oregon feats, it is inactive "very invaluable to do," said McDowell.

China has successful caller decades injected billions of dollars into processing an precocious abstraction programme connected par with those of the United States and Europe.

In 2019, China landed a probe connected the acold broadside of the moon, making it the archetypal spacecraft ever to bash so. In 2021, it landed a tiny robot connected Mars.

Tiangong, whose halfway module launched successful 2021, is planned to beryllium successful usage for astir 10 years.

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