Tianzhou-3 Supply Mission Launched To Support The Up Coming Shenzhou-13 Manned mission
Tianzhou-3 supply Craft has been launched on Sep 21 to prepare ground for the upcoming Shenzhou-13 manned mission in October. The October mission is expected to last six months, to Create a new record of the longest stay in space for a Chinese astronaut in a single mission.
This mission has taken supplies, equipment and propellant to get Tianhe Space Station ready for the next three-taikonaut of Shenzhou-13 mission in October for their six-month stay. It is the Tianzhou spacecraft series second supply delivery run to the orbiting Tianhe module following a first by the Tianzhou-2 mission launched on May 29.
Tianzhou-3 will dock with the Tianhe Station from the rear, whereas Tianzhou-2 had flown around Tianhe and conducted an automatic docking to the craft’s front, which had taken four hours. The Tianzhou-3 cargo spacecraft is expected execute a fast and automatic rendezvous and docking with the Tianhe core module.
The Tianzhou-3 mission will sustain taikonauts’ 6-month-long stay in space, therefore it is carrying more cargo than Tianzhou-2. The number of packages onboard Tianzhou-3 is 25 percent more than on Tianzhou-2 and it is nearly 8.5tons.
One of the most expensive items to be onboard the Tianzhou-3 is one piece of spacesuit specially designed for spacewalk missions that weighs some 90 kilograms. Tianzhou-2 had sent two pieces of spacesuits for Taikonauts’ spacewalk with each weighing some 100 kilograms.
Tianzhou-3 has also carried a range of goods including daily necessities, drinking water, gas supplies, consumables for extravehicular activities including spacewalk as well as experiment payloads.
Also, onboard Tianzhou-3 is the replacement parts of the urine treatment system to ensure the device is in the best condition for the Shenzhou-13 crew.
The system has processed some 600 liters of urine into over 500 liters of water which was used to generate oxygen and for clean-up purpose during the Shenzhou-12 crew’s three-month stay. Shenzhou-13 crew will install those parts when moving into the China’s space station core module, said Cui Guangzhi, the project leader.
Carrying the Tianzhou-3 cargo spacecraft, the Long March-7 Y4 rocket lifted off from Wenchang Space Launch Center located in South China’s Hainan Province on Monday afternoon. After a flight time of around 597 seconds, the spacecraft separated with the rocket and entered preset orbit. At 3:22 pm, the solar panels onboard the spacecraft smoothly unfolded, with all functions in normal operating condition, marking the success of the third launch of a spaceship to the space station core cabin, according to the China Manned Space Agency.
This is the fourth of 11 missions scheduled to build China’s three-module space station. The historic Shenzhou-12 mission had placed three taikonauts in the smaller Core module of space station and they spent a record 90 days in the and safely returned to Earth on Friday.
Although the launch of Tianzhou-2 by Long March-7 Y3 rocket was a successful one, it experienced two delays and met problems of leaking of injected fuels.
The Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft was originally slated to be launched at around 1:30 am on May 20 and to head to China’s Tianhe space station core cabin, which was launched into orbit on April 29, for a supply run. However, the launch was scrubbed narrowly following an announcement from CMSA on the early morning of May 20 for “technical reasons.”
Next In October Shenzhou-13 will be Launched with the astronauts ant it will rendezvous with the Tianhe module and conduct a R-Bar or vertical docking with the orbiting craft.
