China’s Shenzhou 21 docks with space station, sets the country’s own speed record

JIUQUAN China AP China communicated Saturday that its Shenzhou spaceship docked with China s space station with its latest three rotation crew at the country s own record speed after a prosperous launch The entire docking process lasted around hours three hours shorter than the previous missions according to China Manned Space Agency The Shenzhou spaceship took off as planned at p m local time Friday from the Jiuquan launch center in northwestern China The three astronauts on Shenzhou are planned to enter the Tianhe core module of the space station after the dock The crew includes pilot and mission commander Zhang Lu who also was on the Shenzhou mission to the space station two years ago The other two are flying for the first time Wu Fei an engineer is the country s youngest astronaut to join a spaceflight Zhang Hongzhang is a payload specialist who was a researcher focusing on new vitality and new materials before becoming an astronaut Zhang mentioned the gang would turn the space station into a utopia by doing tai-chi gardening and appreciating poetry on the Tiangong space station Like those before them they will stay at the station for roughly six months While in space the astronauts planned to conduct scientific and applied projects in biotechnology aerospace medicine materials science and other areas For the first time China is sending mice to its space station Four in total two males and two females will be monitored to inquiry how weightlessness and confinement affect their behavioral patterns explained Han Pei an engineer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences This will help us master key technologies for the breeding and monitoring of small mammals in space and make a preliminary assessment of the mice s exigency responses and adaptive changes in space environments Han announced The space mice were selected from candidates after more than days of intensive training according to China s official Xinhua News Agency State media China National Radio revealed that the mice are expected to stay five to seven days in the space station and hitch a ride in Shenzhou coming back to Earth China s space initiative is a source of enormous national pride and a hallmark of the nation s technological advances over the past two decades China launched its first crewed mission in becoming only the third nation to do so after the former Soviet Union and the United States Zhang Jingbo a spokesperson for the China Manned Space Agency commented the research and progress work is progressing smoothly for the agency s plans to send an astronaut to the moon Our fixed goal of China landing a person on the moon by is firm Zhang stated at a news conference a day ahead of the launch The Tiangong or Heavenly Palace space station has helped make China a major member in space It was entirely Chinese-built after the country was excluded from the International Space Station over U S national safeguard concerns China s space operation is controlled by the People s Liberation Army the military branch of the ruling Communist Party In a collaboration with Pakistan China is in the process of choosing two Pakistani astronauts to come to China for training The space agency s plan is to send one of them on a short-term mission as a payload expert in what would be the first visit to the space station by a foreign astronaut