HELSINKI — China’s Shenzhou-17 astronauts launched into their first extravehicular activity Thursday to deal with minor damage to a Tiangong space station solar array.
Mission commander Tang Hongbo and Tang Shengjie began a roughly 7.5-hour extravehicular activity (EVA), or spacewalk, Thursday. The pair reentered Tiangong through the Wentian science module’s EVA hatch at 8:35 a.m. Eastern (1335 UTC) Dec. 21, according to the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO).
Shenzhou-17 spacewalk tasks included a repair test on one in every of the Tianhe core module’s solar arrays. The system was earlier found to have suffered minor damage through micrometeoroid hits.
The successful experimental repair work might be seen as an enormous step for China because it goals to maintain its Tiangong space station operational and permanently occupied for at the very least a decade.
Crewmate Jiang Xinlin assisted operations from inside Tiangong through the usage of the space station’s robotic arm. Tang Shengjie, 34, became China’s youngest astronaut to embark on an EVA thus far.
Tang Hongbo accomplished his first spacewalk back in July 2021 throughout the Shenzhou-12 mission — the primary to go to the Tianhe core module.
“This extravehicular activity is awfully significant, and very difficult. It’s an in-orbit maintenance in its true sense,” Tang Hongbo said after the spacewalk, in keeping with CCTV.
“At that moment, being there, I deeply felt the vastness of the starry sky and the profound meaning of infinite space exploration,” Tang Hongbo said.
A highlight video released by CMSEO showed the astronauts conducting closeup examinations of the solar array, assisted by the station’s robotic arms.
The EVA posed latest challenges for the astronauts, in keeping with Dong Nengli, deputy chief designer of China’s human spaceflight program.
“For the previous extravehicular activities, the main tasks for astronauts were to put in and check. This round of extravehicular activities on Thursday we call experimental servicing,” Dong told CCTV.
“This time the astronauts operated on one in every of the solar wings. It’s flexible, to a certain extent, and likewise very thin, which limits the space of operation to a certain degree,” Dong said.
Dong added that the successful EVA meant the teams had mastered the power for some extravehicular repairs. Success was thus, “laying a solid foundation for us to ensure the space station’s safety and reliability in the longer term.”
The work required close coordination with the bottom. “The repair work requires a really high level of precision, so it demands high precision in astronauts’ operation and proficiency of their use of tools,” Wang Yanlei, director of the astronaut selection and training department of the China Astronaut Research and Training Center, told CCTV.
“Additionally they had to verify the coordination between ground and space, and confirm the accuracy of the position.” Wang added.
Evolving Tiangong plans
China accomplished construction of Tiangong in October 2022 and is further developing its plans for its utilization.
CMSEO is planning to launch a further module which is able to allow the expansion of the orbital outpost. Yang Liwei, the country’s first astronaut to fly to space, says a process to pick out the primary international astronauts to go to Tiangong is underway.
A report from the Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) earlier this yr noted that how CMSEO operates Tiangong, such its opening participation to civilian astronauts and nonstate-owned enterprise (SOE) firms, could probably change the worldwide image of the Chinese space program. CMSEO operates under China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Gui Haichao became the primary Chinese civilian in space throughout the five-month-long Shenzhou-16 mission earlier this yr.
Industrial launch firms may additionally get to play a task in a brand new low-cost cargo system to provide Tiangong. Tomas Hrozensky, a senior research fellow on the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI), told SpaceNews earlier this yr that the CMSEO cargo program is a transparent indication that China is searching for to copy the approach which yielded NASA a serious success.
Also Dec. 21 components for a Long March 7 rocket arrived on the coastal Wenchang spaceport. The rocket will launch the Tianzhou-7 cargo mission to Tiangong in mid January.