Three Chinese astronauts landed this Saturday in the northern region of Inner Mongolia after spending 183 days in space, culminating the longest manned mission in this country, state media reported.
The team of two men and one woman (Zhai Zhigang, Ye Guangfu and Wang Yaping) landed in a small capsule shortly before 10:00 local time (Friday 23 in Argentina) after spending six months on the Chinese space station Tiangong, which is still is under construction.
“Shenzhou-13’s re-entry capsule has landed successfully,” state broadcaster CCTV said.
Live television broadcasts showed the capsule settling in a cloud of dust as ground crews approached the artifact in helicopters.according to the AFP news agency.
The Shenzhou-13 spacecraft is the latest mission in the Chinese program, after landing a rover on Mars and collecting samples from the Moon.
About 45 minutes after landing, Zhai, the mission commander, left the capsule and was immediately placed in a special chair and covered with a blanket, waving and smiling at the cameras.
“I am proud of our heroic country; I feel extremely good,” he said in an interview with CCTV shortly after leaving.
The Shenzhou-13 spacecraft is the latest mission in the Chinese program, after landing a rover on Mars and collecting samples from the Moon.
The trio of astronauts blasted off last October from the Gobi desert in northwest China.in the second of four planned manned missions between 2021 and 2022 to assemble the Tiangong station, which means “Heavenly Palace” in Mandarin.
Located at an altitude of 350-400 km, the station must have three modules of which only one is currently in orbit, the Tianhe (“Heavenly Harmony”), where the crew stayed.
The other two modules, named Mengtian and Wentian, will be launched next year and will be attached to Tianhe, to allow experiments in biotechnology, medicine or astronomy to be carried out.
The astronauts conducted numerous scientific experiments, prepared equipment and tested technologies for the next phases of construction.
In these six months the astronauts carried out numerous scientific experiments, prepared equipment and tested technologies for the next phases of construction.
They also carried out two spacewalks, one of them carried out at the end of November by Wang Yaping, the first Chinese woman to walk in space.
The last weeks of the mission consisted of preparing the cabin for the crew of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch in the coming months.
The previous record for stay in space for China was achieved by the Shenzhou-12 mission, which spent 92 days in orbit, although from now on the period of stay in the Chinese space station will be half a year, according to CCTV.
The world’s second-largest economy has invested billions in its military-run space program for the purpose of have a permanent crew station in 2022 and eventually send humans to the Moon.
In addition to its Tiangong station, Beijing plans to build a base on Earth’s satellite, and the National Space Administration says it has ambitions to send a manned mission there by 2029.
