Next, the taikonauts will perform work on the movement of goods and other related tasks
BEIJING, October 17. /tass/. The crew of the Chinese Shenzhou-13 manned spacecraft on Sunday began unloading the Tianzhou-3 spacecraft, which contains food, equipment and other cargo necessary for the astronauts to stay in orbit. This is stated in the message of the Manned Flight Program of the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA), published on the official account on the social network WeChat.
"On Sunday at 09:50 Beijing time (04:50 Moscow time), the Shenzhou-13 crew members successfully entered the Tianzhou-3 cargo ship," the report said. As noted, further taikonauts (the name of space flight participants adopted in China) will perform work on the movement of cargo and other related tasks.
China launched the base module of the national space station into orbit in April. From June 17 to September 16, three astronauts from the Shenzhou-12 crew worked at the station. During this time, the Taikonauts made two spacewalks to install equipment.
On September 20, China sent the Tianzhou-3 cargo transport into orbit. On the night of October 15-16, local time, the Shenzhou-13 manned spacecraft was launched to the station. The new crew is expected to stay in orbit for about six months.
In total, the installation of all the nodes of the station will take about a year and will be completed in 2022. The program provides for six more launches: the delivery into orbit of two more laboratory modules "Wentian" and "Mentian", two cargo ships and two manned expeditions with taikonauts. The total mass of the station will be more than 90 tons. Three cosmonauts and up to six people will be able to work on it at the same time when the crew changes. The service life of the station will be about 10 years.
After the formation of the main elements of the station is completed, the autonomous Xuntian module with an optical telescope will be launched into the same orbit. The diameter of its mirror will be 2 m. The module will be equipped with its own engines: it is assumed that from time to time it will dock to the station for repair, refueling and maintenance of equipment.
