BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese language spacecraft returned to Earth on Tuesday with three astronauts who accomplished a six-month mission aboard the nation’s orbiting area station.
The Shenzhou-17 craft carrying Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie and Jiang Xinlin landed on the Dongfeng website in north China’s Interior Mongolia Autonomous Area within the Gobi Desert shortly earlier than 6 p.m. It comes roughly 4 days after the Shenzhou-18 mission docked with the station with their three-member alternative crew.
China constructed its personal area station after being excluded from the Worldwide Area Station, largely due to U.S. issues over the Chinese language army’s whole management of the area program amid a sharpening competitors in expertise between the 2 geopolitical rivals. This 12 months, the Chinese language station is slated for 2 cargo spacecraft missions and two manned spaceflight missions.
The brand new crew is made up of Commander Ye Guangfu, 43, a veteran astronaut who took half within the Shenzhou-13 mission in 2021, and fighter pilots Li Cong, 34, and Li Guangsu, 36, who’re spaceflight rookies.
They’ll spend about six months on the three modules of the area station, the Tiangong, which might accommodate as much as six astronauts at a time. Throughout their keep, they’ll conduct scientific checks, set up area particles safety gear, perform payload experiments, and beam science courses to college students on Earth.
China carried out its first crewed area mission in 2003, turning into the third nation after the previous Soviet Union and the U.S. to place an individual into area utilizing its personal sources. Tiangong was launched in 2021 and accomplished 18 months later.
The U.S. area program is believed to nonetheless maintain a big edge over China’s as a result of its spending, provide chains and capabilities. Nevertheless, China has damaged out in some areas, bringing samples again from the lunar floor for the primary time in a long time and touchdown a rover on the much less explored far facet of the moon.
The U.S. goals to place a crew again on the lunar floor by the tip of 2025 as a part of a renewed dedication to crewed missions, aided by personal sector gamers similar to SpaceX and Blue Origin.
