China’s Shenzhou 14 astronauts have actually turned over control of the Tiangong spaceport station and went back to Earth.
The return pill from the objective’s Shenzhou spacecraft set down securely after sundown within the Dongfeng landing location in the Gobi Desert in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Sunday (Dec. 4) at around 7 a.m. EST (1200 GMT, 8: 00 p.m. regional time), about 9 hours after undocking from the nation’s just recently finished Tiangong spaceport station
The safe return marks completion of a six-month-long objective throughout which astronauts Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe managed the arrival of the 2nd and 3rd modules for Tiangong and performed 3 spacewalks to inspect and evaluate out the brand-new centers.
Related: China’s Shenzhou 14 astronauts snap sensational images of Earth, the moon and more
The 3 astronauts radioed that they were feeling great quickly after landing, with the message welcomed with applause at the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center (BACC).
Before leaving, the team played their part in the nation’s very first team handover, with the brand-new Wentian and Mengtian modules contributed to the Tianhe core module enabling both Shenzhou 14 and the recently gotten here Shenzhou 15 teams to invest 5 days together onboard. The party marked the very first time China has actually had 6 astronauts in area all at once.
Chen, Liu and Cai likewise hosted a live and interactive science outreach lecture and sent out house spectacular images of the Earth and moon throughout their half year in orbit. They were likewise associated with 5 rendezvous and docking maneuvers– with modules, brand-new Tianzhou trucks and Shenzhou craft showing up– 2 spacecraft separations and 2 module transpositions, which transferred the Wentian and Mengtian modules to their long-term lateral docking ports.
Shenzhou 14 released on June 5 this year, reaching the solo Tianhe module 6.5 hours later on, however the team leave a finished and totally functional, three-module, T-shaped Tiangong spaceport station.
The objective matches the Shenzhou 13 objective in being China’s longest up until now, at 182 days. Objective leader Chen Dong likewise set a brand-new Chinese record for overall time in area, ending up being the nation’s very first astronaut to invest more than 200 days in orbit. Chen formerly invested 33 days aboard the Tiangong 2 test area laboratory, a model for the bigger Tiangong modules, throughout the Shenzhou 11 objective in 2016.
Shenzhou 14 was the 3rd crewed objective to Tiangong, which initially consisted entirely of the Tianhe core module, which released in April2021 The very first crewed check out to Tianhe, Shenzhou 12, took off in June 2021 and landed 92 days later on
The recently in progress Shenzhou 15 objective will likewise last around 6 months, provided by the TIanzhou 5 truck. The spacecraft for the following objective is currently at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch. Shenzhou 16 has actually been put together and checked and is on standby in case of requirement of an emergency situation launch to Tiangong, according(opens in brand-new tab) to China’s main area news outlet.
The finished Tiangong station– at which Shenzhou 15 and Tianzhou 5 are presently docked– has to do with 20% as enormous as the International Space Station(ISS).
The nation prepares to keep the Tiangong spaceport station completely inhabited and functional for a minimum of a years and might see industrial objectives, global astronauts and even traveler sees to the orbital station in the coming years.
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