China’s Shenzhou-15 Manned Spaceship With 3 Astronauts Docks With Space Station

China’s Shenzhou-15 manned spaceship launched on Tuesday successfully docked with the under-construction space station early on Wednesday, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). The spaceship propelled by the Long March-2F Y15 carrier rocket blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert in northwest China on Tuesday night.

The spaceship operated a fast automated rendezvous and docked with the front port of the space station’s Tianhe module at 5:42 am Wednesday (Beijing Time), according to the CMSA, reported news agency Xinhua. The entire process took almost 6.5 hours.

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The spaceship carried three astronauts including Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming, and Zhang Lu for the first in-orbit crew handover in Chinese space history.

The Shenzhou-15 team is led by 57-year-old Fei Junlong who commanded the Shenzhou-6 mission in 2005. It is his first time in space since then.

There will be a week-long handover period that will also establish the station’s ability to house six astronauts. The new crew will live on the station for six months, taking over from three colleagues who arrived in June.

Significance of Shenzhou-15 mission

Shenzhou-15 was the last of 11 missions, including three previous crewed missions that were conducted to assemble the “Celestial Palace”, as the multi-module station is known in Chinese. The first mission was launched in April 2021. The mission is engaged to assemble the station that is expected to operate for around a decade and run experiments in near-zero gravity.

The mission will remain the second permanently inhabited space outpost, after the Nasa-led International Space Station from which China was excluded in 2011, reported BBC.

China also announced on Monday plans for a manned mission to the Moon amid intensifying competition with the United States of America. The previous crew is expected to return to Earth early next month.

The Shenzhou-15 mission comes at a time when the country is witnessing protests against China’s zero-Covid policies, while its economy cools amid uncertainties at home and abroad.

(With inputs from PTI)