BEIJING — China s Shenzhou 13 Spacecraft carrying three Chinese astronauts docked at its space station on Saturday, kicking off an incredible six-month stay as the country moves towards completing the new outpost.
The spacecraft was docked at 12: 23 a.m. Saturday with the Long March 2 F rocket and launched from the Tianhe core module of the Tiangong Space Station 6: 56 a.m. approximately six and a half hours later.
The three astronauts entered the core module for Tianhe Space Station at about 10 a.m., China Manned Space Agency said.
The two men and one woman are the second crew to move into the space station, which was launched last April. The first crew remained three months.
The new crew includes two veterans of space travel. Zhai Zhigang, 55, and Ye Guangfu, 41, who is on his first trip to space, Wang Yaping, 41, and Wang Yaping, 43.
They were portrayed by a national band and supporters singing Ode to the Motherland, underscoring the military pride that has been invested in the space program, which has advanced rapidly in recent years.
The crew will conduct three spacewalks to install equipment in preparation for expanding the station; assess living conditions in the Tianhe module and perform experiments in space medicine and other fields.
When completed with the addition of two more sections, named Mengtian and Wentian, the station will weigh about 66 tons, much smaller than the International Space Station, which launched its first module in 1998 and weighs around 450 tones.
Two more Chinese modules are due to be launched before the end of next year during the stay of the yet - to-be named Shenzhou - 14 crew.
The Foreign Ministry of China reiterated on Friday its commitment to cooperation with other nations in the peaceful use of space.
Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said sending humans into space was a common cause of mankind. China would continue to expand the depth and breadth of international cooperation and exchanges in crewed spaceflight and make positive contributions to the exploration of the mysteries of the universe, he said.
China was excluded from the International Space Station largely due to U.S. objections over the Chinese program's secretive nature and close military ties, prompting it to launch two experimental modules before starting on the permanent station.
U.S. law requires congressional approval for contact between the American and Chinese space programs, but China is cooperating with other countries including France, Sweden, Russia and Italy, with space experts from China too. If China will support astronauts from other countries, the space station could become fully functional once it becomes operational.
China has launched seven crewed missions with a total of 14 astronauts aboard — two have flown twice since 2003 — when it became the third nation after the Soviet Union and the United States to put a person in space on its own.
China has also expanded its work on lunar and mars exploration, including landing a rover on the far side of the moon and returning lunar rocks to Earth for the first time since the 1970s.
This year China also landed its Tianwen-1 space probe on Mars, whose accompanying Zhurong probe has been exploring for evidence of life on the red planet.
Other Chinese science and technology-related space programs call for collecting soil from an asteroid and bringing back additional lunar samples. China has also expressed an aspiration to build people on the moon and possibly land a scientific base there, although no timeline has been proposed for such projects. A highly secretive space plane is also under development.