China is poised to launch three astronauts to its Tiangong space station on Tuesday morning (Nov. 29), and you’ll watch the motion dwell.
A Long March 2F rocket is scheduled to launch the Shenzhou 15 mission towards Tiangong on Tuesday from China’s Jiuquan Satellite tv for pc Launch Middle at 10:08 a.m. EST (1508 GMT; 11:08 p.m. native time).
You’ll be able to watch dwell right here at House.com, courtesy of CCTV, or directly from the Chinese broadcaster (opens in new tab). Protection begins at 6:30 a.m. EST (1130 GMT).
Associated: Chinese astronauts enter newly arrived cargo spacecraft at Tiangong space station
Shenzhou 15 will ship Fei Junlong (the mission’s commander), Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu to Tiangong for a roughly six-month keep. The mission is predicted to reach on the T-shaped space station about six hours after launch.
The Shenzhou 15 astronauts will meet three of their counterparts aboard Tiangong — the crew of Shenzhou 14, which launched in early June. This might be a primary for China, which has by no means supported two crews on the orbiting outpost concurrently earlier than.
The overlap might be transient, nonetheless; Shenzhou 14 is predicted to return to Earth within the coming days.
Tiangong is about 20% as large because the International Space Station. The Chinese language outpost is now absolutely constructed; its meeting phase ended shortly after the arrival of Mengtian, its third and ultimate module, on Oct. 31.
China plans to proceed working Tiangong for not less than the subsequent 10 years. Most of its occupants over that span will presumably be homegrown astronauts, however Chinese language space officers have stated they might ultimately open the station to overseas spaceflyers and perhaps even to space tourists.
Mike Wall is the writer of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a ebook in regards to the seek for alien life. Observe him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Observe us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab).
