Tag: astronauts

  • China to ship subsequent house station crew in June

    According to sources, China is about to launch three extra astronauts to its latest house station in June.

    China will launch three extra astronauts to its latest house station in June. (Representational Photo: AFP)

    China will launch three extra astronauts to its latest house station in June after the most recent crew returned this weekend following a six-month keep in orbit, an official stated Sunday.

    The crew of the Shenzhou 14 capsule will spend six months on the Tiangong so as to add two modules to the station, Hao Chun, director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, advised a information convention.

    China’s bold house program launched its first astronaut into orbit in 2003, landed robotic rovers on the moon in 2013, and on Mars final yr. Officials have mentioned a attainable crewed mission to the moon.

    The core module of the Tiangong, or Heavenly Palace, was launched in April 2021. Plans name for finishing building this yr.

    The Wentian module shall be launched in July and the Mengtian module in October, Hao stated.

    Near the tip of the Shenzhou 14 crew’s mission, three extra astronauts shall be launched aboard Shenzhou 15 for a six-month keep, Hao stated. He added that the 2 crews would overlap for 3 to 5 days, marking the primary time the station has six folks aboard.

    On Saturday, the crew of Shenzhou 13 landed within the Gobi desert within the northern area of Inner Mongolia.

    During the mission, astronaut Wang Yaping carried out the primary spacewalk by a Chinese lady. Wang, commander Zhai Zhigang and crewmate Ye Guangfu additionally beamed again physics classes for highschool college students.

    China was the third nation to launch an astronaut into house by itself after the previous Soviet Union and the United States. Tiangong is China’s third house station following predecessors launched in 2011 and 2016.

    The authorities introduced in 2020 that China’s first reusable spacecraft had landed following a check flight however no images or particulars have been launched.

    China is excluded from the International Space Station resulting from U.S. unease that its house program is run by the ruling Communist Party’s army wing, the People’s Liberation Army.

  • Chinese astronauts land on Earth after China’s longest crewed house mission

    Three Chinese astronauts returned to earth after spending 183 days in house. This is China’s longest crewed house mission. They accomplished the fifth of 11 missions wanted to complete China’s house station by the top of 2022.

    The three Chinese astronauts exiting the capsule by which they landed on earth. (Credits: AFP)

    Three Chinese astronauts returned to earth on Saturday after 183 days in house, state tv reported, finishing the nation’s longest crewed house mission thus far.

    The astronauts landed 9 hours after they left a key module of China’s first house station.

    While in orbit, the Shenzhou-13 mission astronauts took handbook management within the Tianhe dwelling quarters module for what state media known as a “docking experiment” with the Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft.

    Following their launch in October, the astronauts – Zhai Zhigang, Ye Guangfu and a feminine crew member, Wang Yaping – spent 183 days in house, finishing the fifth of 11 missions wanted to complete the house station by the top of the 12 months.

    One of the Chinese astronauts exiting the capsule by which the landed on earth. (Credits: AFP)

    Shenzhou-13 was the second of 4 deliberate crewed missions to finish development of the house station, which started final April. Shenzhou-12 returned to Earth in September.

    China’s subsequent two missions might be Tianzhou-4, a cargo spacecraft, and the three-person Shenzhou-14 mission, Shao Limin, deputy expertise supervisor of Manned Spaceship System was quoted by state media as saying.

    Barred by the United States from taking part within the International Space Station (ISS) in orbit, China has spent the previous decade growing applied sciences to construct its personal house station, the one one on the earth apart from the ISS.

    China, which goals to turn out to be an area energy by 2030, has efficiently launched probes to discover Mars and have become the primary nation to land a spacecraft on the far aspect of the Moon.

  • Space station’s first all-private astronaut workforce docked to orbiting platform

    The first all-private workforce of astronauts ever launched to the International Space Station (ISS) arrived safely on the orbiting analysis platform on Saturday to start a week-long science mission hailed as a milestone in industrial spaceflight.

    The rendezvous took place 21 hours after the four-man workforce representing Houston-based startup firm Axiom Space Inc lifted off on Friday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, using atop a SpaceX-launched Falcon 9 rocket.

    The Crew Dragon capsule lofted to orbit by the rocket docked with the ISS at about 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) on Saturday as the 2 area autos had been flying roughly 250 miles (420 km) above the central Atlantic Ocean, a dwell NASA webcast of the coupling confirmed.

    🗞️ Subscribe Now: Get Express Premium to entry one of the best Election reporting and evaluation 🗞️

    The closing strategy was delayed by a technical glitch that disrupted a video feed used to watch the capsule’s rendezvous with ISS. The snafu compelled the Crew Dragon to pause and maintain its place 20 meters away from the station for about 45 minutes whereas mission management trouble-shooted the difficulty.

    With docking achieved, it was anticipated to take about two hours extra for the sealed passageway between the area station and crew capsule to be pressurized and checked for leaks earlier than hatches could be opened, permitting the newly arrived astronauts to come back aboard ISS.

    The multinational Axiom workforce, planning to spend eight days in orbit, was led by retired Spanish-born NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, 63, the corporate’s vice chairman for enterprise growth.

    His second-in-command was Larry Connor, an actual property and know-how entrepreneur and aerobatics aviator from Ohio designated because the mission pilot. Connor is in his 70s however the firm didn’t present his exact age.

    Rounding out the Ax-1 crew had been investor-philanthropist and former Israeli fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe, 64, and Canadian businessman and philanthropist Mark Pathy, 52, each serving as mission specialists.

    Stibbe grew to become the second Israeli to fly to area, after Ilan Ramon, who perished with six NASA crewmates within the 2003 area shuttle Columbia catastrophe.

    They shall be becoming a member of the present ISS occupants of seven common, government-paid area station crew members – three American astronauts, a German astronaut from the European Space Agency and three Russian cosmonauts.

    SCIENCE FOCUSED

    The new arrivals introduced with them two dozen science and biomedical experiments to conduct aboard ISS, together with analysis on mind well being, cardiac stem cells, most cancers and growing older, in addition to a know-how demonstration to supply optics utilizing the floor rigidity of fluids in microgravity.

    The mission, a collaboration amongst Axiom, Elon Musk’s rocket firm SpaceX and NASA, has been touted by all three as a serious step within the enlargement of space-based industrial actions collectively referred to by insiders because the low-Earth orbit financial system, or “LEO economy” for brief.

    NASA officers say the pattern will assist the U.S. area company focus extra of its assets on big-science exploration, together with its Artemis program to ship people again to the moon and in the end to Mars.

     

    While the area station has hosted civilian guests on occasion, the Ax-1 mission marks the primary all-commercial workforce of astronauts despatched to ISS for its meant objective as an orbiting analysis laboratory.

    The Axiom mission additionally stands as SpaceX’s sixth human area flight in almost two years, following 4 NASA astronaut missions to the area station and the “Inspiration 4” launch in September that despatched an all-civilian crew to orbit for the primary time. That flight didn’t dock with ISS.

    Axiom executives say their astronaut ventures and plans to construct a non-public area station in Earth orbit go far past the astro-tourism companies supplied to rich thrill-seekers by such corporations as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, owned respectively by billionaire entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson.