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szdaily -> News -> 
China launches Mengtian as its space station nears completion
    2022-11-01  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

CHINA yesterday launched the space lab module Mengtian, taking the construction of the country’s space station Tiangong into final stage.

Mengtian, Tiangong’s second lab module now flying to join the two-module combination already about 400 km above Earth, is the last “building block” that allows Tiangong to form a T-shape structure, the planned layout at the space station’s completion.

The new combination is projected to take shape after a succession of elaborately maneuvered tasks, including the docking and the subsequent in-orbit transposition.

The Long March-5B Y4 carrier rocket, carrying Mengtian, blasted off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan Province at 3:37 p.m. (Beijing Time), according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). About eight minutes later, Mengtian separated from the rocket and entered its preset orbit.

This is the 25th flight mission since the country’s manned space program was approved and initiated in 1992.

The building of Tiangong, which is now populated by a crew of three astronauts, into a national space laboratory with three modules marks a milestone in China’s three-decade effort to advance its manned space program.

The 17.88-meter-long Mengtian has a takeoff mass of 23 metric tons. Consisting of a work cabin, a cargo airlock cabin, a payload cabin and a resource cabin, it is the heaviest single-cabin active spacecraft in orbit in the world right now.

The core module Tianhe combined with the Wentian lab module took on an L shape after the latter was moved at the end of September to park at a side port of the core module’s node cabin, vacating the front docking port for Mengtian’s berthing.

Mengtian is designed to be connected to the short message communication services provided by China’s Beidou Navigation Satellite System.

By using a custom-made app on a mobile phone, astronauts can contact their family members on Earth via text or voice messages. The three astronauts of the Shenzhou-14 mission are now waiting for the new workplace, which has an available activity space of 32 cubic meters.

Carrying eight science experiment cabinets and offering 37 extravehicular installation options, Mengtian will enable more in-cabin and out-of-cabin experiments.

Aboard the module is the world’s first space atomic clock system consisting of a hydrogen clock, a rubidium clock and an optical clock. It is also the world’s most accurate in-orbit time and frequency system.

Among Mengtian’s payloads is a rack capable of producing ultra-cold quantum gas extremely close to the absolute zero, a cabinet with the ability to film — for the first time in a space station — material changes in high temperatures with X-rays, and a cutting-edge fluids physics lab in space.

These platforms will create conditions that cannot be achieved on Earth, thus serving as incubators for emerging technology and new materials like alloyed metal, crystals and semiconductors, said the payloads designers.

Mengtian also carries a toolbox equipped with a dexterous robotic arm and an augmented-reality smart glass to assist astronauts with maintenance.

Tiangong is currently composed of four modules: the Tianhe core module, the Wentian lab, the Tianzhou 4 cargo ship and the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft.

The Tianzhou 5 cargo craft and the Shenzhou-15 crew are scheduled to arrive at the massive orbiting outpost around the end of the year. With the arrival of the Shenzhou-15 astronauts, the manpower in Tiangong will increase to six for a short period.          (Xinhua)

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