China will send a spacecraft with three astronauts tomorrow (Thursday, June 16) (04:22 Greek time) to the under construction space station for a first shipment of three months.
The three male astronauts, aged 56, 54 and 45, will depart from the Jiujuan base in the Gobi Desert in the northwest, the Chinese manned space flight service (CMSA) said in a press conference.
The astronauts will be inside the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft, which will be launched with a Long March 2F rocket and will be connected to Tianhe (“Celestial Harmony”), the only part of the space station already in space. The control center and their habitat astronauts, Tianhe, went into low orbit at the end of April (at an altitude of 350-390 km), according to APE-MPE, citing Reuters and AFP.
China: Four manned flights in the future
Astronauts will have no time to lose: they will have to get down with the maintenance of the unit, the installation of equipment, to make outings in space, to take care of the preparation of future missions for the expansion of the space station and the accommodation areas of future crews.
The Shenzhou-12 mission will be the third of 11 needed for the completion of the construction of the station between 2021 and 2022. There are planned to be four manned flights.
In addition to the Tianhe section that is already in orbit, the remaining two sections – these are laboratories – are scheduled to be sent into space next year. They will allow experiments in the fields of biotechnology, medicine, astronomy and space technologies.
The success of the mission is a matter of prestige for Beijing, amid escalating tensions with the West. Beijing is preparing to celebrate the centennial of the Chinese Communist Party on July 1.
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