The astronauts reached China’s space station on Sunday after about “seven hours of flight”, as reported by Chinese state television. They had left the Jiuquan Space Center in the Gobi desert in the night in a Long March-2F rocket.
The taikonauts are to expand the space station during a six-month stay. The station should be fully operational by the end of the year. China wants to catch up with the other space nations.
The team consists of two men and one woman. The commander is 43-year-old Air Force pilot Chen Dong. The other two members are Cai Xuzhe and Liu Yang. The three should connect the two modules of “Tiangong”. According to state media, scientific experiments are also planned in addition to the construction work.
It was not until mid-April that three taikonauts returned to earth from “Tiangong” (“Heavenly Palace”). Her six-month stay in space was the longest manned space mission in the People’s Republic to date. In addition to two field trips to work on the station, the two men and one woman also used their stay on the space station for numerous scientific experiments and technology tests.
The “Tiangong” core module was launched in April last year. According to China’s plans, the space station will be used for at least a decade. In recent years, the People’s Republic has invested billions in its space programs in order to catch up with the USA and Russia. The Chinese government plans to send humans to the moon for the first time in 2029.
The space station called “Tiangong” underpins China’s ambitions to become a space power and to catch up with the great spacefaring nations USA and Russia. The People’s Republic has invested billions in its space program and has already had some successes. China was the first country to land a spacecraft and exploration rover on the dark side of the moon. Last year, the rover “Zhurong” also landed on Mars, which is to explore the surface of the planet.
China has been barred from the International Space Station, particularly under pressure from the US, which has reservations about the opacity of China’s space program and its close ties to the military.
Source: Nachrichten
