China has gone one step further to become a great space power.
In the past seven months, it has sent exploratory rovers to the
Moon
and
Mars
.
To quickly expand the record, a manned flight was missing for the longest mission in the country: the construction of its space station.
Mounted on the
Long March-2F
carrier rocket
, the Shenzhou-12 manned spacecraft was successfully launched this Thursday morning from the
Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center
, located in the Gobi desert, in the northeast of the country.
In the ship were three men:
Nie Haisheng
(56 years old),
Liu Boming
(54) and
Tang Hongbo
(45).
They will be the first Chinese astronauts to work the initial stages of building the space station in a low Earth orbit, about 400 kilometers above the ground.
There, each one has their own small module to sleep, they share a bathroom, a dining room and a communication center for contact with the earth.
It was the first time in nearly five years that China has sent astronauts into space
.
This mission will be the third of 11 required to complete the space station in 2022. Among them, four will be missions with people on board, which will propel up to 12 astronauts into space, outnumbering the 11 men and women that Beijing had sent. since 2003. All astronauts are pilots of
the People's Liberation Army
, the military branch of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The crew is led by Commander
Nie Haisheng
.
This is your third space flight.
The first was during the Shenzhou-6 mission in October 2005. Then, she boarded Shenzhou-10 in June 2013.
"
I am an astronaut and have been a member of the CCP for almost 35 years
. I have personally witnessed the development of China's manned space, from cockpit work to spacewalks," Nie told a news conference on Wednesday. "We have written several glorious chapters in China's space history over the past decades, and this mission embodies the expectations of the people and the CCP," he added.
The three
Shenzhou-12
astronauts
completed more than 6,000 hours of preparation for the mission. The demanding training included underwater somersaults to get used to the weight of the spacesuits during field work at the station.
Liu Boming
, the second oldest member of the team, joined China's space mission in 2008. The youngest,
Tang Hongbo
, is the only one of the three who had not traveled to space. The crew will remain in orbit for three months, breaking the 30-day stay record set by the 2016 mission.
As reported by local media, the three astronauts will perform their routines in the air synchronized with the ground and, with the support of robotic arms, they will also carry out two long-term off-vehicle activities to install and maintain extravehicular equipment. At the end of the mission, they will return to the
Dongfeng
landing site
near the
Badain Jaran desert
in Inner Mongolia, taking the return capsule from the spacecraft.
A few hours ago,
Gao Xu
, deputy director of design for the
Shenzhou-12
and a spokesperson for the
China Academy of Space Technology
(CAST), the main contractor for the project, assured that the development of the manned spacecraft followed the highest standards of the country's space industry. "The nine-meter-long, eight-ton craft is made up of three sections: an orbiter module, a return module and a propulsion module, and has 14 subsystems on board," Gao explained.
Besides the
Tiangong
space station
under construction, the only one currently in space is the International Space Station, operated by the space agencies of the
United States
,
Russia
,
Japan
,
Canada
and the
European Union
. The United States excluded China from the project for a station that is scheduled to be decommissioned in 2024, although it is expected to extend its service until 2028 or 2030.
Although it is much smaller than the
International Space Station
,
China
hopes that its new modular station can operate for ten years or more.
As part of its plans to have the station fully crewed by December next year,
Beijing
launched the first central module on April 29, which has a total length of 16.6 meters and a living space of 50 cubic meters, according to the
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation
(CASC).
For the launch he used a
Long March 5B
heavy lift rocket
.
There was a lot of controversy on his return because the debris from the rocket fell uncontrollably into the Indian Ocean.
NASA criticized China for failing to "meet responsible standards."
The new launch represents an issue of great prestige in
China
. The government has long been running a propaganda campaign to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the
Communist Party
, which is celebrated on July 1. The good economic health of the country and the control of the pandemic are the strong points in his narrative facing the rest of the world. Also his momentum in the space race. And that China started late. In 2003, it put its first astronaut into orbit, becoming the third country to achieve spaceflight independently after the
Soviet Union
and the
United States
.
Now, China hopes to replicate the achievements of its competitors in a shorter time.
In January 2019, the
Chang'e-4
probe
successfully landed in
the Von Kármán crater on the Moon
.
In December last year,
Chang'e 5
successfully returned to Earth carrying soil samples from the Moon's surface.
The last time humanity brought samples back to a Soviet Union probe in 1976. Last May, China became the second country after the United States to successfully send a probe to Mars.
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