2023-05-30 20:07:47
Time.news – La Chinese sent its first civilian astronaut into orbit, in the latest progress marked by theambitious space program of Beijing, which plans to send astronauts to the moon by 2030. Gui Haichao37, a professor of aerospace engineering at Beijing’s Beihang University, and who trained in Canada, is one of three “taikonauts,” as Chinese astronauts are known, who set off today aboard the Shenzhou-16 and headed to the space station Tiangong. Gui was joined by another newcomer, Zhu Yangzhuand by the veteran Jing Haipengboth members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
“A Complete Success”
Six and a half hours after departing from the Jiuquan launch base in Inner Mongolia, Shenzhou-16 docked with the Chinese space station, and the three taikonauts were welcomed into the Tianhe main module by their three colleagues who departed last November aboard the Shenzhou-15 spacecraft: the six Chinese astronauts will spend five days together, during which they will perform “various scheduled tasks”, according to Chinese media reports. The launch was a “complete success” and the crew is “in good condition,” said Zou Lipeng, director of the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.
Shenzhou-16 is the 11th Chinese manned space mission, and the departure of the spacecraft, carried into orbit by a Long March 2F rocket, was preceded by a choreographed ceremony filmed by the state media, which was attended by the three taikonauts, accompanied by a musical band and the public waving their national flags. The Tiangong is made up of three modules, assembled in the shape of a “T” and weighing 22 tons each: in addition to the main Tianhe module, there are the two laboratory modules Wentian and Mengtian.
The evolution of the Chinese space program
The space station should remain in low orbit around the Earth, between 400 and 450 kilometers away from our planet, for about ten years. China says it is open to international cooperation: partnerships with theEuropean Space Agency already exist, and could increase in the coming years, especially if from 2024 the Chinese space station remains the only one operational, for the withdrawal of the International Space Station.
Among the greatest successes in the Chinese space program should be mentioned the record in landing its own spacecraft on the dark side of the Moon, the Chang’e-4 probe in 2019, while two years later China brought its spacecraft to the surface of Mars first rover, becoming the third country to reach Mars, after the United States and the former Soviet Union.
In 2020, however, China had completed the Beidou satellite constellation, a rival of the American GPS. Although Beijing reassures that its space program is peaceful, the US suspects that China has military ambitions, especially for the partnership with Russia in part of its space program. China is the only country to have its own space station, following the US ban on China from participating in the International Space Station in 2011 over national security concerns and technology theft.
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