BEIJING (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th June, 2022) The new crew of Chinese orbital station Tiangong have entered the Tianzhou-4 unmanned cargo spacecraft and began its unloading, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said Monday.
The new crew arrived at the Chinese space station on board the Shenzhou-14 spaceship on Sunday. It includes commander Chen Dong and cosmonauts Cai Xuzhe and Liu Yang, the first Chinese woman sent to space.
The Long March 2F rocket carrying the Shenzhou-14 spaceship blasted off at 10:44 a.m. Beijing time on Sunday (02:44 GMT) and docked the space station's core module, Tianhe, at 5:42 p.m. The crew entered the module at 8:50 p.m.
The Tianzhou-4 cargo ship, loaded with fuel, equipment, food, and other items necessary for the life and work of the crew at the station, docked the space station in early May.
The three astronauts will stay in orbit for six months to complete the construction of the station by docking the Wentian laboratory module and the Mengtian research module to Tianhe. The Shenzhou-14 mission is also expected to have its first crew rotation in orbit, after which the three Chinese cosmonauts currently in orbit will return to Earth in December.
The construction of China's multi-module Tiangong orbital station started in April 2021, when the Tianhe core module was successfully launched into orbit. In April, China's Manned Space Engineering Office said that the country had scheduled six space missions by the end of 2022 to complete the construction of the space station. The station's technical lifespan is expected to be 15 years.
