China is sort of able to launch the third and closing piece of its modular crewed space station.
A Long March 5B heavy-lift rocket rolled out to the pad at Wenchang spaceport on Hainan island early Tuesday (Oct. 25), China’s human spaceflight company (CMSA) introduced.
The Mengtian space station module is encapsulated in a 67-foot-long (20.5 meters) payload fairing on high of the 187-million-pound (849,000 kilograms) Lengthy March 5B. The rocket and module have been transported to the pad in a vertical place, masking roughly 9,200 toes (2,800 meters) in beneath three hours.
Associated: The latest news about China’s space program
CMSA didn’t reveal a launch date for Mengtian, however earlier launches and earlier statements by Chinese language space officers level to a liftoff round Oct. 31 Beijing time.
Mengtian (“Dreaming of the Heavens”) is a 58.7-foot-long (17.9 m) and roughly 48,500-pound (22 metric tons) spacecraft designed primarily to host an array of science racks and experiments.
The brand new module will be a part of the already orbiting Tianhe core module, launched in April 2021, and Wentian, which launched in July. Collectively the three modules will full China’s Tiangong space station.
Three Shenzhou 14 mission astronauts are at present aboard Tiangong awaiting the arrival of the brand new module.
China plans to function Tiangong for not less than a decade and can conduct its first crew handover as quickly as subsequent month, when the Shenzhou 14 astronauts welcome aboard the crew of Shenzhou 15, who will launch from Jiuquan within the Gobi Desert.
Notably, the massive first phases of the three beforehand launched Lengthy March 5B rockets have entered orbit and made high-profile uncontrolled reentries round per week after launch. The fiery first stage reentry from the Wentian module launch in July was spotted by onlookers in Malaysia and Indonesia.
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