First taikonauts arrive
THE first taikonauts arrived at China’s new space station yesterday in the country’s longest crewed mission to date, a landmark in establishing Beijing as a major space power.
The trio blasted off on a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan launch centre in China’s Gobi desert, and their craft docked around seven hours later at the Tiangong station, where they will spend three months.
State broadcaster CCTV showed a live feed from inside the spacecraft, with the three taikonauts lifting their visors after it reached orbit. One smiled and waved at the camera. Another floated a pen off his lap in zero gravity, browsing the flight manual.
Around seven hours after lift-off, space officials confirmed that the craft had docked with Tianhe, the core module of the country’s new space station.
The Shenzhou-12 craft – having separated from the Long March rocket – had “successfully docked with the forward port of the core module” of the Tiangong station, said the China Manned Space Agency.
By last night, the taikonauts were shown on television entering the core module, one of them making a 360-degree flip in the process.
The group will be setting up their living quarters and are expected to open the door to the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft – which docked earlier with the core module – this morning.
The mission’s commander is Nie Haisheng, a decorated air force pilot in the People’s Liberation Army, who has participated in two space missions. The two others are also from the military.
The Tianhe module of the space station has separate living spaces for each taikonaut, a “space treadmill” and bike for exercise, and a communication centre for emails and video calls with ground control.
Huang Weifen of the China Manned Space Program said the taikonauts would perform two spacewalks, both lasting around six or seven hours. She also said the trio would wear newly developed spacewalk suits.
The launch of China’s first crewed mission in nearly five years is a matter of huge prestige in China, as Beijing prepares to mark the 100th anniversary of the ruling Communist Party on July 1 with a massive propaganda campaign. To prepare, the crew underwent more than 6 000 hours of training, including doing hundreds of underwater somersaults in full space gear.
The Chinese space agency is planning 11 launches through to the end of next year, including three more manned missions that will deliver two lab modules to expand the 70-ton station, along with supplies and crew.
China’s space ambitions have been fuelled in part by a US ban on its astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS), a collaboration between the US, Russia, Canada, Europe and Japan. The ISS is due for retirement after 2024, though Nasa has said it could potentially remain functional beyond 2028. Tiangong will be much smaller than the ISS, and is expected to have a lifespan of at least 10 years.
China has said it would be open to international collaboration on its space station but has yet to give details.
Zhou Jianping, chief designer for the space programme, said “foreign astronauts are certainly going to enter the Chinese space station one day”.
“A number of countries have expressed a desire to do that and we will be open to that in future,” he said.
Beijing said in March it was also planning to build a separate lunar space station with Russia, and this week the two countries issued a “roadmap” for potential collaboration opportunities.
“After the completion of China’s space station, in the near future, we will see both Chinese and foreign astronauts jointly participate in the flight of the Chinese space station,” Ji Qiming, assistant to the director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, told reporters.