The mission took off from the Jiuqian satellite launch center in the northwest of the country via the Long March-2F carrier rocket
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China launched a ship with three astronauts who will finish building the Tiangong space station
The Chinese spacecraft Shenzhou-14 successfully took off this Sunday at 10:44 local time(2:44 GMT) with three astronauts on board, who will have to reach the Tiangong space station to finish building it.
The spacecraft took off at the scheduled time from the launch center of satellites of Jiuqian, in the northwest of the country, through the Long March-2F carrier rocket, according to images broadcast live by state television CGTN.
Once it enters orbit,The ship will have to be coupled with the Tianhe central module, 18 meters long, and with the Tianzhou-3 and Tianzhou-4 supply ships so that the astronauts can finish building the Tiangong station, which the Asian country plans to have ready for the end of this year.
The heads of the space mission announced moments after liftoff and the solar panels were successfully deployed that the launch had been a “complete success.”
Once it enters orbit, the ship must dock with the Tianhe core module, 18 meters long, and with the Tianzhou-3 and Tianzhou-4 supply ships
The astronauts on board the Shenzhou-14, Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe, they will remain in orbit for six months to complete the construction of the Tiangong space station, assembling its basic structure of three modules, the Tianhe central and the Wentian and Mengtian laboratories.
Last April, its predecessor, the Shenzhou-13 spacecraft, landed in the Gobi desert after completing its operations in Tiangong, where three astronauts spent 183 days in the longest manned mission carried out by China until then.
Rescue teams immediately went to the Dongfeng landing point, in China’s autonomous region of Inner Mongolia (north), the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The landing “was perfect and the three taikonauts are in very good condition”, the newspaper Global Times quoted the Center as saying. of Beijing Aerospace Control.
That was also China’s second manned mission to its space station.
On the Shenzhou-13 mission, the astronauts completed several tasks to further prepare for the Chinese space station, including two spacewalks, more than twenty scientific experiments and data collection.
Last April, its predecessor, the Shenzhou-13 , landed in the Gobi desert with three astronauts on board after completing its operations on the Tiangong
Shenzhou-14 and Shenzhou-15 astronauts are expected to definitively complete construction work on the Tiangong, which should be completed by the end of 2022, according to original plans.
The crew of Shenzhou-15 is expected to perform extravehicular activities in addition to assembling, testing and debug payloads inside the modules.
The Tiangong space station, whose name means “Palac Celestial io” in Mandarin, will weigh about 70 tons and is expected to work for about 15 years orbiting about 400 kilometers from the Earth’s surface.
(With information from EFE)