The maneuver looks tricky. China launched into space on Sunday July 24 the second of the three modules of its space station under construction. This is a crucial step towards completing the installation. The machine named Wentian, about 20 tons and without an astronaut on board, was propelled by a Long March 5B rocket at 2:22 p.m. (8:22 a.m. in Paris) from the Wenchang launch center, on the tropical island of Hainan, in southern China.
A quarter of an hour later, an official from the space agency responsible for human spaceflight (CMSA) announced the “hit” of the launch. Nearly 18 meters long and 4.2 meters in diameter, this laboratory module is to be docked at Tianhe, the station’s first module, which has already been in orbit since April 2021. The docking operation constitutes a challenge for the crew because it requires several successive manipulations, of high precision, in particular with a robotic arm.
“It’s the first time that China has had to dock such large vehicles together” and “it’s a delicate operation”, explains to AFP Jonathan McDowell, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in the United States. The manipulation will have to be repeated with the arrival later in 2022 of a new laboratory module.
Finally, “this will allow the station to be much more capable, with the space and power to carry out more scientific experiments”highlighted jonathan McDowell. Equipped with three sleeping spaces, a toilet and a kitchen, Wentian will serve as a backup platform to control the station in the event of a failure. The module also has spaces for scientific experiments and includes an airlock that will become the preferred passage for spacewalks.
Named in Chinese Tiangong (“Heavenly Palace”) but also known by its acronym CSS (for “Chinese space station” in English), the Chinese space station should be fully operational by the end of the year. After Wentian this weekend, the three astronauts of the Shenzhou-14 mission, currently on the space station, will welcome the third and final module, Mengtian, there in October.