I started in June Shenzhou Expedition – 14 The two astronauts, Commander Chen Dong and his two companions, Liu Yang and Cai Hsu-tzu, landed in the Gobi Desert in northern China on Sunday.
Their main task was to carry out the finishing work for the space station called Tienkung (Heavenly Palace).
The replacement crew arrived aboard the Shenzhou-15 spacecraft on Wednesday.
The Heavenly Palace space station is the “crown jewel” of Beijing’s ambitious space program, which has sent robots to Mars and the moon, and
It made it possible for the country to be the third country to put humans into orbit.
MTI said that in recent decades, China has invested billions of euros in its space program to catch up with the United States and Russia.
Among other things, China was forced to build its own space station because the United States did not allow the country to participate in the International Space Station (ISS) program. The final weight of the Celestial Palace is expected to be 90 tons, about a quarter of the weight of the International Space Station. Its size will be similar to the former Soviet Russian one to the Mir space station. According to plans, it will operate for about ten years.
The Chinese will send a man to the moon in eight years
Next year, Beijing plans to launch a space telescope with a field of view 350 times larger than NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003. Last year, it placed a small robot on Mars, and by 2030 it wants to send humans to the moon.