Oct. 31 (UPI) — China despatched three of its astronauts to the Tiangong area station on Friday within the sixteenth crewed spaceflight for China’s Shenzhou program.
The Shenzhou 21 mission took off from the Gobi Desert on a Lengthy March 2F rocket round 11:44 a.m. EDT on the Jiuquan Satellite tv for pc Launch Heart.
Astronauts Zhang Lu, Zhang Hongzhang and Wu Fei have been aboard for the six-month mission.
The three-module Tiangong area station, accomplished in October 2022, will welcome its tenth crewed flight.
The craft will dock with the entrance port of the Tianhe core module of the area station at about 3.5 hours after takeoff. It has a quick automated rendezvous and docking mode that may minimize about 3 hours off of the mission, House.com reported.
Chinese language employees members pictured Oct. 2016 strolling in entrance of the Lengthy March 2F provider rocket carrying the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft forward of its launch on the Jiuquan Satellite tv for pc Launch Heart in Jiuquan, Gansu province. On Friday, the Shenzhou 21 mission will launch. Picture by How Hwee Younger/EPA
The astronauts will likely be greeted by Chen Dong, commander of the Shenzhou 20 mission, together with crewmates Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie, who launched on April 24. Chen Dong is the primary Chinese language astronaut to build up 400 days in orbit. The astronauts from his mission will come again to Earth on Monday.
Zhang Lu, 48, instructions China’s Shenzhou 15 mission for its jaunt in area. Wu, 32, and Zhang Hongzhang, 39, made their first area flights Friday.
Wu is China’s youngest astronaut.
“Because the youngest member of China’s Astronaut Corps, I really feel extraordinarily lucky to embark on my spaceflight mission,” Wu mentioned Thursday.
The mission will focus in on a variety of scientific trials, together with mice experiments and spacewalks.
“I owe my success to the period we stay in, which is seeing leapfrog improvement in China’s aerospace trade,” Wu mentioned.
