China’s Shenzhou 15 crew has active 6 months in advance aboard Tiangong house station
The three astronauts about to take regulate of China’s Tiangong area station have an action-packed 6 months in advance of them.
Astronauts Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu achieved the recently accomplished house station on Nov. 29 adhering to the launch of their Shenzhou 15 spacecraft atop a Very long March 2F rocket. Their arrival meant China had six astronauts in orbit for the 1st time.
The crew are staying proven the ropes aboard Tiangong by the crew of Shenzhou 14 and carrying out preparations for the new mission, which include changing air filters and water filters. But the Shenzhou 14 trio are shortly set to return household, leaving commander Fei and colleagues to get their very own get the job done underway.
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Tiangong has been expanded from one particular module to a few modules in the past couple of months. This usually means the Shenzhou 15 crew will have more house, but also much more duties, duties and servicing perform to carry out.
“The operation and routine maintenance of three modules is rather a massive workload,” Huang Weifen, China’s main astronaut trainer, instructed CCTV (opens in new tab).
Tiangong now has 24 science cupboards found in the new Wentian and Mengtian modules, and the crew are tasked with conducting much more than 100 science experiments working with the new equipment around the coming half 12 months.
The Shenzhou 15 astronauts are also scheduled to embark on three or 4 extravehicular things to do, or spacewalks, which will deliver new difficulties, Huang stated.
“They have to perform extravehicular responsibilities at the time when the space station has its largest-at any time configuration. For illustration, the astronauts performing on the bulkhead have to move a prolonged length from 1 conclude of the house station to the other,” Huang mentioned.
She additional that the astronauts will need to carry out extravehicular functions in parallel at two details, meaning a greater workload for the astronauts outdoors the space station and the remaining crew member aiding from inside Tiangong. “They will face bigger difficulties,” said Huang.
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