BEIJING (AP) — Final preparations were underway Monday to send a new crew of three to China’s space station as it nears completion amid heightened competition with the United States.
China’s Manned Space Agency said the Shenzhou-15 mission will lift off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert at 11:08 p.m. Tuesday evening.
The six-month mission, commanded by Fei Junlong and staffed by Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu, will be the last “in the construction phase of the Chinese space station”, agency official Ji Qiming told reporters on Monday. .
Fei, 57, is a veteran of the four-day Shenzhou-6 mission in 2005, the second in which China sent a human into space. Deng and Zhang fly in space for the first time.
The station’s third and final module docked with the station earlier this month, one of the final steps in a more than decade-long effort to maintain a constant crewed presence in orbit.
The astronauts will briefly overlap aboard the station, named Tiangong, with the previous crew, which arrived in early June for a six-month stay.
Tiangong has room to accommodate six astronauts at a time. Previous missions to the space station have taken about 13 hours from liftoff to docking.
Next year, China plans to launch the Xuntian Space Telescope, which, although not part of Tiangong, will orbit in sequence with the station and may occasionally dock there for maintenance.
No other future additions to the space station have been publicly announced.
China’s permanent station will weigh around 66 tonnes – a fraction of the International Space Station, which launched its first module in 1998 and weighs around 465 tonnes.
With a lifespan of 10 to 15 years, Tiangong could one day become the only space station still in service if the International Space Station adheres to its 30-year operating plan.
China’s crewed space program officially turns three decades old this year, but it really kicked off in 2003, when China became the third country after the United States and Russia to send a human into space using its own resources.
The program is spearheaded by the military wing of the ruling Communist Party, the People’s Liberation Army, and has proceeded methodically and almost entirely without outside support. The United States barred China from the International Space Station because of its program’s military ties.
China has also had success with unmanned missions, and its lunar exploration program generated media buzz last year when its Yutu 2 rover returned images of what some described as a “mysterious hut”. but which was most likely just a rock. The rover is the first to be placed on the unexplored far side of the moon.
China’s Chang’e 5 probe returned moon rocks to Earth for the first time since the 1970s in December 2000 and another Chinese rover is searching for evidence of life on Mars. Officials are also considering a crewed mission to the moon.
No timetable has been proposed for a crewed lunar mission, even as NASA continues its Artemis lunar exploration program which aims to send four astronauts around the moon in 2024 and land humans there as early as 2025.
China’s space program has also sparked controversy. Beijing has dismissed complaints that it let rocket stages fall to Earth unchecked after NASA accused it of ‘failing to meet responsible standards for their space junk’ when parts of a Chinese rocket landed in the Indian Ocean.
China’s growing space capabilities also feature in the Pentagon’s latest defense strategy.
“In addition to expanding its conventional forces, the PLA is rapidly advancing and integrating its space, counterspace, cyber, electronic and information warfare capabilities to support its holistic approach to joint warfare,” the strategy reads.
The United States and China are at odds on a range of issues, in particular self-governing Taiwan, which Beijing is threatening to annex by force. China responded to a September visit to Taiwan by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by firing missiles over the island, staging war games in surrounding waters, and organizing a simulated blockade, which could trigger a US military response.
#China #prepares #send #crew #space #station