China is preparing to send three astronauts to live on its space station for
six months — a new milestone for a program that has advanced rapidly in
recent years.
It will be China’s longest crewed space mission and set a record for the
most time spent in space by Chinese astronauts. The Shenzhou-13 spaceship is
expected to be launched into space on a Long March-2F rocket early Saturday
morning from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi
Desert in northwestern China.
The first crew who served a 90-day mission aboard the main Tianhe core
module of the space station returned in mid-September.
The new crew has two veterans of space travel. Pilot Zhai Zhigang, 55,
performed China’s first spacewalk. Wang Yaping, 41, and the only woman on
the mission, carried out experiments and led a science class in real-time
while traveling on one of China’s earlier experimental space stations. Ye
Guangfu, 41, will be traveling into space for the first time.
The mission is expected to continue the work of the initial crew, who
conducted two spacewalks, deployed a 10-meter (33-foot) mechanical arm, and
held a video call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
China Manned Space Agency Deputy Director Lin Xiqiang said the rocket was
fueled and ready to fly. “All systems conducting the Shenzhou-13 mission
have undergone a comprehensive rehearsal. The flight crew is in good
condition and our pre-launch preparations are in order,” Lin said at a
Thursday briefing.
The crew’s scheduled activities include up to three spacewalks to install
equipment in preparation for expanding the station, verifying living
conditions in the module and conducting experiments in space medicine and
other areas, Lin said.
China’s military, which runs the space program, has released few details but
says it will send multiple crews to the station over the next two years to
make it fully functional. Shenzhou-13 will be the fifth mission, including
trips without crews to deliver supplies.
When completed with the addition of two more modules — named Mengtian and
Wentian — the station will weigh about 66 tons, a fraction of the size of
the International Space Station, which launched its first module in 1998 and
will weigh around 450 tons when completed. Lin said the two additional
modules would be sent before the end of next year during the stay of the
yet-to-be-named Shenzhou-14 crew.
China was excluded from the International Space Station largely due to U.S.
objections over the Chinese program’s secretive nature and close military
ties. It made plans to build its own space stations in the early 1990s and
had two experimental modules before starting on the permanent station.
U.S. law requires congressional approval for contact between the American
and Chinese space programs, but China is cooperating with space experts from
countries including France, Sweden, Russia and Italy.
Lin said China was expanding such cooperation, with Ye Guangfu having
undergone training with the European Space Agency in 2016, and European
astronauts participating in China’s sea survival training in 2017.
“We welcome astronauts from other countries entering our space station and
conducting international cooperation,” Lin said. “We believe that after the
station enters the operation and utilization phase, more foreign astronauts
will visit our station.”
China has launched seven crewed missions with a total of 14 astronauts
aboard since 2003, when it became only the third country after the former
Soviet Union and the United States to put a person in space on its own. Two
Chinese astronauts have flown twice.
Along with its crewed missions, China has expanded its work on lunar and
Mars exploration, including placing a rover on the little-explored far side
of the Moon and returning lunar rocks to Earth for the first time since the
1970s.
China this year also landed its Tianwen-1 space probe on Mars, whose
accompanying Zhurong rover has been exploring for evidence of life on the
red planet.
Other programs call for collecting soil from an asteroid and bring back
additional lunar samples. China has also expressed an aspiration to land
people on the moon and possibly build a scientific base there, although no
timeline has been proposed for such projects. A highly secretive space plane
is also reportedly under development.
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