BEIJING: The first astronauts for China\u00b4s new space station are set to blast off Thursday for the country\u00b4s longest crewed mission to date, a landmark step in establishing Beijing as a major space power.<\/p>\n
The trio will launch on a Long March-2F rocket for the Tiangong station, where they will spend three months.<\/p>\n
Liftoff is expected at 9:22 am local time (0122 GMT) from the Jiuquan launch centre in northwest China\u00b4s Gobi desert.<\/p>\n
Their Shenzhou-12 spacecraft will dock with the Tianhe main section of the space station, which was placed in orbit on April 29.<\/p>\n
The module has separate living spaces for each of them, a treadmill for exercise, and a communication centre for emails and video calls with ground control.<\/p>\n
It is China\u00b4s first crewed mission in nearly five years.<\/p>\n
The launch represents a matter of huge prestige in China, as Beijing prepares to mark the 100th anniversary of the ruling Communist Party on July 1 with a massive propaganda campaign.<\/p>\n
To prepare for the mission, the crew has undergone more than 6,000 hours of training, including hundreds of underwater somersaults in full space gear.<\/p>\n
The mission\u00b4s commander is Nie Haisheng, a decorated air force pilot in the People\u00b4s Liberation Army who has already participated in two space missions.<\/p>\n
The two other members are also members of the military.<\/p>\n
Over the next year and a half, another 11 missions are planned to complete the construction of Tiangong in orbit.<\/p>\n
The first crew will test and maintain the systems onboard, conduct spacewalks and undertake scientific experiments.<\/p>\n
China\u00b4s space ambitions have been fuelled in part by a US ban on its astronauts on the International Space Station, a collaboration between the United States, Russia, Canada, Europe and Japan.<\/p>\n
It is due for retirement after 2024, even though NASA said it could potentially remain functional beyond 2028.<\/p>\n
Tiangong is to be much smaller than the ISS, and expected to have a lifespan of at least 10 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIJING: The first astronauts for China\u00b4s new space station are set to blast off Thursday for the country\u00b4s longest crewed mission to date, a landmark step in establishing Beijing as a major space power. The trio will launch on a Long March-2F rocket for the Tiangong station, where they will spend three months. Liftoff is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10330,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10329","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10331,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10329\/revisions\/10331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}