Shenzhou 19 crew take over Tiangong
On October 30, the 3 people, Shenzhou 19 crew, arrived upon the Chinese space station -Tiangong. They will be staying there for a total of 6 months, taking over from the Shenzhou 18 team.
They launched on a Long March 2F - a three-stage rocket (four strap-on boosters (stage 1), a central core stage (stage 2), and an upper stage (stage 3)) - from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, and 6.5 hours later, arrived at their new home for the next 6 months.
Shortly after Shenzhou 19 docked at Tiangong, the hatch between the spacecraft and the Tiangong space station was opened (04:51 GMT), allowing of the astronauts to greet each other.
The official handover between Shenzhou 18 and 19
On Friday, the formal handover happened with the Shenzhou 18 commander, Ye Guangfu (who recently became China’s first astronaut to spend a total of 365 days in space) to his Crew 19 counterpart -Cai Xuzhe, who also helped finalise the construction of Tiangong alongside his other Shenzhou 14 crewmates. This crew is also China’s youngest with Xuzhe, 48 and Song Lingdong and Wang Haozhe (China’s only female spaceflight engineer and 3rd Chinese female to go into space), 34. All 3 of the crew are also part of the Chinese military air force.
The crew is now embarking on their six-month stay, in which they will be occupied with many scientific tasks. Lin Xiqiang, deputy director of the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), said in a press conference last Tuesday: "During the Shenzhou-19 flight ... 86 space sci-tech experiments will be carried out in the fields of space life sciences, microgravity physics, materials, medicine, new technologies,". One of the experiments will involve testing how simulated lunar soil bricks will cope with the conditions in space and should these be successful China hope to use them in their planned permanent lunar research station which should be completed by 2035. The crew will also be looking forward to some extravehicular activities (EVAs), very similar to those completed on the ISS.
