Update 26 Jul 2022: China launches Wentian module to Tiangong space station
China's first lab module for space station
China on Sunday launched Wentian, the first lab module of its space station. The new module will function both as a backup of the core module and as a powerful scientific experiment platform. The Wentian module is 17.9 meters long, has a maximum diameter of 4.2 meters and a takeoff mass of 23 tonnes, almost the size of a subway car in Beijing. It is the heaviest single-cabin active spacecraft in orbit in the world, according to Liu Gang, deputy chief designer of the China manned space program's space station system with the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST).
The Wentian module consists of a work cabin, an airlock cabin and a resource cabin. The Long March-5B Y3 carrier rocket, carrying Wentian, blasted off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on the coast of the southern island province of Hainan at 2:22 p.m. (Beijing Time), according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). About 495 seconds later, Wentian separated from the rocket and entered the planned orbit. The launch is a complete success, the CMSA declared.
This is the 24th flight mission since the country's manned space program was approved and initiated. The construction of China's Tiangong space station is expected to be completed this year. It will then evolve from a single-module structure into a national space laboratory with three modules -- the core module Tianhe, and lab modules Wentian and Mengtian. The Tianhe module was launched in April 2021, and the Mengtian module is set to be launched in October this year.
China launches Tianhe module to Tiangong space station
Rendering of Tianhe core module with the robotic arm at docking position
Tianhe (Chinese: 天和; pinyin: Tiānhé; lit. 'Harmony of the Heavens'), officially the Tianhe core module (Chinese: 天和核心舱), is the first module to launch of the Tiangong space station. It was launched into orbit on 29 April 2021, as the first launch of the final phase of Tiangong program, part of the China Manned Space Program (Project 921).
Tianhe follows in the footsteps of Salyut, Skylab, Mir, International Space Station, Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2 space stations. It is the first module of a third-generation Chinese modular space station. Other examples of modular station projects include the Soviet/Russian Mir, Russian OPSEK, and the International Space Station. Operations will be controlled from the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center.
In 2018, a fullscale mockup of Tianhe was publicly presented at China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai. In October 2020, China selected 18 new astronauts ahead of the space station construction to participate in the country's space station project.
Why the China Mars rover’s landing site has geologists excited
China’s Mars rover Zhurong has yet to drive off its lander and start exploring.Credit: Xinhua/Alamy
Now that they know the general landing location of China’s Zhurong Mars rover, scientists are rushing to analyse satellite images and geological maps to pinpoint intriguing features. Of particular significance is a possible mud volcano — a type of landform that no Mars rover has visited before.
“We want to propose the plan for the rover,” says Xiao Long, a planetary geologist at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, who says scientists across China will now have the tantalizing opportunity to influence Zhurong’s journey. “A number of teams will be trying to plan out the traverse — where you would go in what time frame, to accomplish as many goals as you can in a 90-day mission,” adds Joseph Michalski, a planetary scientist at the University of Hong Kong.
Encased in a lander, the rover touched down shortly after 7 a.m. Beijing time on Saturday, 10 months after China’s Tianwen-1 mission left Earth. Until the touchdown, the potential landing zone — in a vast impact crater called Utopia Planitia — was thousands of kilometres across, meaning that scientists could only loosely finger sites of possible interest.
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China Releases Rover’s First Photos After Mars Landing
An image captured by the Chinese rover Zhurong from the surface on Mars sent on Wednesday.Credit China National Space Administration, via Reuters
Four days after landing a spacecraft on Mars, China’s space agency released its first photographs from the red planet on Wednesday, announcing that the mission was going as planned.
The four-day wait for the images — one in color, one in black and white, as well as a pair of small video clips — had prompted speculation that something might have gone wrong with the landing on Saturday. When China’s space agency issued a statement in response to those concerns on Tuesday, urging patience, the response online was biting.
“Can’t you learn from NASA propaganda?” one user wrote beneath the statement, seeming to chide the agency with a comparison to NASA’s live broadcasts of its latest mission on Mars, which began in February.
Tianwen-1
The Tianwen-1 orbiter (below) and the capsule housing the lander and Zhurong rover
Tianwen-1 (TW-1; simplified Chinese: 天问; traditional Chinese: 天問; lit. Heavenly Questions) is an interplanetary mission by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) to send a robotic spacecraft to Mars, consisting of an orbiter, deployable camera, lander and the Zhurong rover. The spacecraft, with a total mass of nearly five tons, is one of the heaviest probes launched to Mars and carries 13 scientific instruments.
The mission's scientific objectives include: investigation of Martian surface geology and internal structure, search for indications of current and past presence of water, and characterization of the space environment and the atmosphere of Mars. The mission was launched from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on 23 July 2020 on a Long March 5 heavy-lift launch vehicle. After seven months of transit through the inner solar system, the spacecraft entered Martian orbit on 10 February 2021. For the next three months the probe studied the target landing sites from a reconnaissance orbit. On 14 May 2021, the lander/rover portion of the mission successfully touched down on Mars, making China the third nation to both land softly on and establish communication from the Martian surface, after the Soviet Union and the United States. If the deployment of the rover is also successful, China would become only the second nation to accomplish this feat, after the United States, as well as the first nation to orbit, land and release a rover during its first mission to Mars.
The Tianwen-1 mission was the second of three Martian exploration missions launched during the July 2020 window, after the United Arab Emirates Space Agency’s Hope orbiter, and before NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, which landed the Perseverance rover with the attached Ingenuity helicopter drone.
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