Comments
China’s Shenzhou-11 spacecraft carrying two astronauts docked with an experimental space lab orbiting the earth through a remote-controlled automatic operation in the wee hours on Wednesday.
The astronauts entered the space lab Tiangong-2 after the spacecraft successfully docked with the space station and completed the automatic docking around 1 AM (Indian Standard Time), Beijing Aerospace Control Centre (BACC) said.
Shenzhou-11 was successfully launched on Monday in China’s longest-ever manned space mission.
The rendezvous between the spacecraft and the lab took place over 393 kilometers above Earth, BACC said.
The event was telecast live by the state-run China Central Television.
The two astronauts aboard Shenzhou-11 — Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong — later entered the lab and will stay there for 30 days carrying out different experiments.
Shenzhou-11, China’s sixth manned spacecraft, will undertake the longest-ever space mission of China. The two astronauts will spend a total of 33 days in space.
BACC deputy chief engineer Sun Jun told Xinhua that the precision needed for the orbit prediction and automated docking calculation was much higher than the previous docking missions.
The two astronauts extended greetings to all the people of the nation in the space lab, and checked the status of the space complex formed by Shenzhou-11 and Tiangong-2.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.