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Three Chinese astronauts joined the still-under-construction Chinese space station on Thursday, the start of what their government expects will be a decade or more of the continued presence of Chinese astronauts in Earth’s orbit.
Six hours and 32 minutes after the astronauts blasted off from a base in the Gobi Desert on a clear sunny morning, their Shenzhou-12 spacecraft docked with the station’s base model.
“It was a perfect meet and dock process,” Sun Jun, deputy director of the Beijing Aerospace Control Center, told CCTV, the state broadcaster, adding that the mission so far had “fully achieved our original goal.”
In doing so, the Chinese station, called Tiangong, or Heavenly Palace, became one of two inhabited outposts in orbit. The other station, the International Space Station, has operated for more than two decades, but its future is uncertain due to age, budget constraints and tensions between its main partners, the United States and Russia.
No such problems are faced by the Chinese space program, which is building its station independently, although it has invited other countries to contribute to the experiments and may in the future welcome foreign astronauts.
The completion of Tiangong, expected by the end of next year, will be another milestone for an ambitious space program whose recent missions have included returning samples from the Moon and landing a robotic rover on Mars.
Thursday’s launch was shown live on Chinese state television, reflecting the growing confidence of top officials in the space programme. Its missions were often shrouded in military secrecy, at least in some cases, out of fear that something might go wrong. Images from the last Mars mission have not been released for several days.
By contrast, ahead of Thursday’s launch, China’s space agency arranged briefings for select news organizations as well as interviews with the astronauts, who were escorted to the launch site just after dawn Thursday by a motorbike ranger along streets lined with people waving. With flags.
“It feels great,” said the mission’s commander, Major General Ni Hai Sheng, in a video showing him and others preparing to board Shenzhou 12 Thursday morning. “My heart is flying, bravely marching forward.”
Senior political and military leaders watched from the Space Launch Center near Jiuquan, a city on the edge of Gobi, near China’s border with Mongolia. Among them is Han Zheng, one of the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the highest governing body of the Communist Party, which is led by Xi Jinping, the country’s supreme leader.
Unlike his predecessor, Hu Jintao, who marked the beginning of China’s first human spaceflights, starting in 2003, Mr. Xi did not attend. Officials and state media have described the country’s series of successful space missions as validating China’s Communist Party rule and Mr. Xi’s position. On the top.
All three astronauts are party members, and they and other space officials have repeatedly credited Mr. Xi or the party for state achievements in space. Several officials indicated that the mission would coincide with the centenary of the official founding of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai on July 1, 1921.
“The construction and operation of the space station can be considered an important symbol for measuring the economic, technological and comprehensive strength of a country,” Ji Zhiming, assistant director of the China Manned Space Agency, said at a press conference before the opening.
The three astronauts are the first Chinese astronauts since 2016. It’s only China’s seventh manned mission, but more are coming. Three additional launches will transport astronauts to the space station in the next year and a half to complete construction.
China launched the station’s main unit in April and a cargo ship docked on it a month later. The Shenzhou-12, a Soviet-era Soyuz capsule-style vehicle, consists of three modules, including the re-entry vehicle that will bring astronauts back to Earth.
The remainder of Shenzhou 12 will effectively become a third piece of the space station, orbiting 242 miles, or 390 kilometers, above Earth, just below the International Space Station at 248 miles.
The astronauts will spend three months in space. Since the station is still under construction, the main task for the astronauts is to basically go and start installing equipment like cameras and start testing various functions, including life support and waste management. They are scheduled to do two spacewalks.
The commander, General Ni, People’s Liberation Army astronaut brigade, is a former combat pilot and veteran of two previous missions to Shenzhou, in 2005 and 2013. In a briefing with reporters on Wednesday, he said this mission will be more difficult and challenging than the first.
“We will not only have to arrange the basic unit, the ‘space house,'” he said, “but also to make a series of major technological checks.”
At 56 years old, he is the oldest Chinese astronaut to fly in space. (The oldest person to do so was John Glenn, the first American in orbit, who returned 36 years later aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1998, when he was 77.)
Another crew member, Major General Liu Boming, 54, is also a veteran space expert, having been part of a mission in 2008 that included China’s first spacewalk. This feat was accomplished by another astronaut, Zhai Zhigang, but General Liu briefly walked out of a gate to become the second Chinese astronaut to walk in space. The third astronaut, Colonel Tang Hongbo, 45, is making his first flight after 11 years of training.
China previously launched two prototype short-lived space stations, also called Tiangong, in 2011 and 2016. The station is intended to be more permanent, and over the next decade will serve as an in-orbit laboratory for the country’s space program.
Officials said the station will allow Chinese astronauts and scientists on Earth to master complex operations and conduct experiments in the weightless space environment. At least nine trials are scheduled, to date, involving international partners. Once the station is complete, officials said, they will consider transporting foreign astronauts to the station.
Mr. Jie, the space agency’s assistant director, admitted in brief that China was “late” in building orbiting space stations, which the United States and the Soviet Union accomplished decades ago. He said, however, that China has benefited from the “advantages of overdue.”
Tiangong is being built at a time when Russia and the United States are squabbling over the future of the International Space Station, and when China and Russia are cooperating closely in space exploration.
The International Space Station was originally scheduled to be decommissioned in 2015, just four years after its construction was completed, but its life was subsequently extended until 2020, and then until 2024. Legislation recently passed in the US Senate proposes another extension, until 2030.
In 2018, the administration of President Donald J. Trump said it wanted to end direct federal funding for the station after 2024 and convert orbital operations to private space stations. After this decision was criticized, NASA officials insisted that it was not a specific deadline. A feasibility study by NASA concluded that the old space station could last until at least 2028, although Russia has indicated it may consider withdrawing from the project before then.
Claire Vaux contributed to the research.
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