China rolled out a Long March 2F rocket in preparation for the launch of the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft and three men to an orbiting space station module.
The China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) confirmed Wednesday that they had vertically moved the Long March 2F rocket to its launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert.
Shenzhou-12 and three taikonauts (astronauts) will be launched to the Tianhe core module of China's space station. Science Times previously reported that they launched the module on April 28.
Authorities have not yet revealed the mission's scheduled launch date or the identities of the primary and backup crews. Shenzhou-12 was expected to launch on June 10, Beijing time. But a week-long delay in the launch of the Tianzhou-2 cargo mission presumably pushed the launch date back by a week also.
The Shenzhou-12 mission will include several technical verification activities relating to the Tianhe core module's performance and functionality. It will carry out extravehicular activities.
Shenzhou-12 will be China's first crewed mission in more than four and a half years and only the country's eighth. Shenzhou-5, China's first crewed mission, launched in 2003, made China the third country to demonstrate independent human spaceflight capability.
The trip will be the first time that two orbiting space stations would be manned at the same time since May 2000 when STS-101 and Soyuz TM-30 visited the ISS and Mir, respectively. Three Shenzhou flights to mini Tiangong space labs took place in 2012, 2013, and 2016 as stepping stone missions for the larger space station modules, all while the ISS was permanently occupied.
Shenzhou-12 will also set a new record for the length of a Chinese human spaceflight mission. The mission is anticipated to stay docked with Tianhe until September, extending the mission's duration far above Shenzhou-11's record of 33 days achieved in 2016.
Following the clearance of "Project 921" in 1992, the Long March 2F and Shenzhou spacecraft were built to enable human spaceflight capability. At that time, China spelled out its long-term idea for a modular space station.
Two stages and four side boosters make up the 62-meter-long, 464-metric-ton Long March 2F. All of them use a mixture of highly hazardous hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide as a propellant. The launcher has a solid rocket motor-powered launch escape system.
The Tianhe, which is 16.6 meters long and 4.2 meters wide, will offer regenerative life support and the main living quarters for taikonauts and propulsion to keep them in orbit.
Chinese Space Station Construction
Shenzhou-12 will be the third of 11 missions scheduled for the construction phase of China's three-module space station, which will take place in 2021 and 2022.
In September and October, the Tianzhou-3 cargo spacecraft and the Shenzhou-13 crewed mission will launch.
Wentian and Mengtian, two experimental modules, will be put in place in 2022. Astronomy to help in the study of space medicine, space life science, biotechnology, microgravity fluid physics, microgravity combustion, and space technologies.
Space News said international science payloads would also go to the space station through a collaboration between the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs and the CMSEO. The China Space Station is also scheduled to host foreign astronauts.
Long March 5B rockets from Wenchang will launch both modules. Science Times reported that the Long March 5B's first stage, which launched Tianhe, achieved orbit and made a high-profile, uncontrolled descent.
The Chinese space station is intended to last at least 10 years in orbit. The Xuntian optical module, a co-orbiting Hubble-class space telescope, will join it in orbit. The space telescope will have a 2-meter aperture, similar to Hubble's, but with a 300-fold larger field of view.
With this field of vision, Xuntian's 2.5 billion pixel camera will be able to examine 40% of the sky over the course of a decade.
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