Hundreds of enthusiasts had gathered on the surrounding beaches to watch the spectacle. China launched the second of three modules of its under-construction space station into space on Sunday. This is a crucial step to complete the installation.
The ship named Wentian, weighing about 20 tons and without an astronaut on board, was launched by a Long March 5B rocket at 2:22 p.m. local time from the Wenchang Launch Center on the tropical island of Hainan, according to images from the public television. closed TV circuit
After about eight minutes of flight, “Wentian successfully separated from the rocket to place itself in the planned orbit,” he welcomed the space agency in charge of manned flights (CMSA), calling the launch “totally successful.”
“A Delicate Operation”
At almost 18 meters long and 4.2 meters in diameter, this laboratory module is due to dock at Tianhe, the station’s first module, which has already been in orbit since April 2021. Equipped with three sleeping spaces, bathrooms and a kitchen, Wentian will serve as a backup platform to control the station in case of failure.
The module also has spaces for scientific experiments and includes an airlock that will become the preferred passageway for spacewalks. The mooring operation represents a challenge for the crew because it requires several successive high-precision manipulations, particularly with a robotic arm.
“It’s the first time China has had to couple such large vehicles together” and “it’s a delicate operation,” Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the United Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told AFP. A manipulation that will have to be repeated with the arrival at the end of 2022 of a new laboratory module.
In the end, “this will allow the station to be much more capable, with the space and power necessary to carry out more scientific experiments,” says McDowell.
The space station will be operational by the end of 2022
Named Tiangong (“Heavenly Palace”) in Chinese but also known by its acronym CSS (for “Chinese Space Station” in English), the Chinese space station should be fully operational by the end of the year.
After Wentian this weekend, the three astronauts from the Shenzhou-14 mission, currently on the space station, will welcome the third and final module, Mengtian, there in October. The station will have its final T-shaped form. It will be similar in size to the defunct Russian-Soviet Mir station. Its useful life should be at least 10 years, if not 15 years.
“The CSS will then have completed its construction in just a year and a half, the fastest pace in history for a modular space station,” said Chen Lan, an analyst at the Go Taikonauts.com site, which specializes in the Chinese space program. “By comparison, construction of Mir and the International Space Station (ISS) took 10 and 12 years respectively.”
Source: BFM TV
