China rolls out rocket for its longest crew mission yet

.space.com ^ | Andrew Jones

[BenLurkin]

A 203-feet-high (62 meters) Long March 2F rocket was vertically transferred to the pad at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert early on Thursday (Oct. 7).

Atop the rocket is the Shenzhou 13 spacecraft that will carry the three astronauts into orbit. Visible at the top of the payload fairing is an escape launch system that can rapidly carry the spacecraft away from the rocket in case of an emergency early in the flight.

The crew has not yet been announced but is expected to be the backup crew for the recently completed Shenzhou 12 mission.

If correct, that would see astronauts Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu fly to the Tianhe space station module, which launched in April and has so far hosted one, three-month-long crewed mission. This would be Ye's first flight; Wang would become the first female astronaut to visit Tianhe.

The mission's launch window has not yet been announced, however. Liftoff will coincide with a pass of Tianhe over Jiuquan, allowing Shenzhou 13 to catch up with and dock with the module hours later. Airspace closure notices may be the first clear signal as to when the mission will launch.

Once aboard the 54-foot-long (16.6 m) Tianhe module the crew will be expected to stay for up to six months as part of the construction and verification phase of China's space station project. This visit would double China's current human spaceflight mission duration record, which was recently set by Shenzhou 12.

Tianzhou 3, a cargo spacecraft, docked with Tianhe on Sept. 20, delivering nearly 13,230 pounds (6,000 kilograms) of supplies, provisions, experiments and equipment for the Shenzhou 13 mission.

[al baby]

To bad they dont call that BENT ONE

[BiglyCommentary]

Let see, 50 years after the US went to the moon the CHIMCOMs are doing similar missions. 80 years after Japan and the US were flying planes off of carriers, the CHICOM flew their first plane off a carrier.

[SuperLuminal]

The chicom space offensive-weapons systems are getting assembled very quickly aboard their modern (compared to the Russian’s) space station...

Meanwhile, the U.S. is busy determining how to best accomplish inclusivity in their LGBTX space crews by including both Haitians & Afghans in the next launch crew for the Russian space station...

[PIF]

The difference is the Chinese missions are mainly military, despite the press releases and propaganda. US missions were all civilian (or mostly).

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Let see, 50 years after the US went to the moon the CHIMCOMs are doing similar missions.

They've caught up to us. And may be passing us. It's not like we've done much in space since we went to the moon.

[BiglyCommentary]

Thats quite some accomplishment, they steal virtually all the science from us and then “catch up”.

[JoSixChip]

It's not like we've done much in space since we went to the moon.

I don't know, back in the 80s I worked at a company called Martin Marietta durin the Star Wars program. We were building satellites the size of school buses with a platform on one end that had azimuth and elevation servos accurate to within a nanosecond of a degree. I did not have a clearance, but my guess is that kind of accuracy would only be useful for lasers.

[Track9]

What’s a Chinese ‘astronaut’ called anyway…