China’s Shenzhou 14 astronauts have been busy testing a brand new space station module, conducting spacewalks and finishing up experiments — however they’ve additionally discovered time to take some spectacular pictures.
China’s human spaceflight company, CMSA, released the images taken by the astronauts aboard the Tiangong space station throughout their ongoing mission, which launched June 3.
Pictures taken by Cmdr. Chen Dong present one of many station’s versatile solar arrays towards a backdrop of nighttime cities shining from Earth under, and one other picture captures the airglow above our planet that outcomes when daylight interacts with atoms and molecules in Earth’s atmosphere.
Associated: China’s Shenzhou 14 astronauts mark busy 1st month aboard Tiangong space station
Liu Yang, whose earlier mission to space again in 2012 made her China’s first woman in orbit, additionally snapped some photos, together with certainly one of a full moon above Earth. Pictures taken by Cai Xuzhe on his first journey to space embody a picture of Hainan island, simply off the Chinese language mainland, from the place the Tiangong modules launched, and a tomato plant sprouting aboard the station.
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Shenzhou 14 is the third crewed mission to Tiangong. Through the first, Shenzhou 12, astronauts additionally returned stunning images.
The Shenzhou 14 crew is scheduled to obtain a brand new customer later this month, when the third and last module for Tiangong is launched. The Mengtian module will full the deliberate T-shaped orbital outpost.
The crewmembers are anticipated to remain in orbit till someday in December, when they may welcome the incoming Shenzhou 15 mission astronauts and perform China’s first-ever crew handover.
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