China continues to progress in constructing its personal house station, named Tiangong. This week the third module of the brand new station arrived in orbit and was added to the station, and Chinese astronauts entered it for the primary time.

As reported by China’s state information company Xinhua, the astronauts entered the brand new lab module for the primary time on Thursday, November 3. Astronauts Chen Dong, Liu Yang, and Cai Xuzhe have been on the new house station since June as a part of the Shenzhou-14 mission, which docked to the station’s core module Tianhe. The new lab module, named Mengtian, was launched on October 31. It arrived on the core module’s ahead port, earlier than being relocated to a unique port on November 3.

The Tiangong house station now has its three modules in place: the Tianhe core module which incorporates the residing quarters and repair part plus a docking hub, the Wentian module which homes avionics and propulsion programs plus backup features, and now the Mengtian module which incorporates each a pressurized part by which the crew can work and an unpressurized cargo part.

The Shenzhou-14 crew at the moment on the station will quickly be joined by the Shenzhou-15 crew in a mission anticipated to launch this month. Three extra crew members will arrive on the station and have a 10-day handover between the 2 crews. A handover interval wasn’t beforehand potential when the station solely had its core module, however with the addition of the Wentian module which can be utilized as spare crew quarters, it’s now potential for 2 crews to be on the station on the identical time.

The crew can also be anticipating the arrival of the Tianzhou-5 cargo craft which is predicted to launch quickly and can carry gasoline and provides to the station.

Editors’ Recommendations