At 11:14 on October 26, 2023, astronauts Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie and Jiang Xinlin were launched aboard the "Shenzhou 17" manned spacecraft. As of 11:14 a.m. on January 9, 2024, the crew has been flying for 75 days, more than 40% of the mission's schedule, and this month the crew will receive two changes to the space station's configuration.
At present, China's space station is in a state of three-cabin and two-ship combination, and on the basis of the three main modules of "Tianhe", "Wentian" and "Mengtian", the "Tianzhou-6" cargo spacecraft and the "Shen-17" manned spacecraft are docked at the backward and forward ports of "Tianhe" respectively, and operate in a near-circular orbit with an altitude of nearly 400 kilometers and an inclination angle of 42 degrees, with an orbital period of about 92 minutes.
As a large-scale space station and a national space laboratory that has been manned for a long time, astronauts' lives, space science experiments and technical experiments require a certain scale of upward transportation of materials and downward transportation of waste, and these tasks are mainly carried out by the "Tianzhou" cargo spacecraft. The "Tianzhou" spacecraft is the only cargo spacecraft in service in China, with an upward capacity of up to 74 tons, the downlink (re-entry destruction) capacity can reach about 6 tons, and the in-orbit life is more than 1 year. Based on the strong capacity of the Tianzhou spacecraft, after the space station enters the stage of application and development, the launch frequency of the Tianzhou cargo spacecraft will be reduced from twice a year to three times in two years, that is, an average of once every eight months, and the frequency will be further reduced.
Tianzhou-6 cargo spacecraft.
Since its launch on May 10, 2023, the Tianzhou-6 cargo spacecraft has been flying for about eight months and is about to withdraw from the space station assembly. According to the design, the "Tianzhou" spacecraft has an in-orbit life of more than one year, and the early evacuation is on the one hand to meet the needs of the space station's uplink and downlink transportation at a certain frequency, and on the other hand, to free up the backward docking port for the "Tianzhou-7" spacecraft that is about to go up. After the "Tianzhou-6" spacecraft is withdrawn, the space station will be converted into a three-module and one-ship assembly, which is the second configuration change experienced by the "Shenzhou-17" crew during its orbit.
It is expected that on January 17, 2024, the "Tianzhou-7" cargo spacecraft will be launched on the "Chang-7" Yao-8 rocket, and docked with the "Tianhe" backward port in the fast rendezvous and docking mode, and the space station will return to the normal state of 3 cabins and 2 ships. The Tianzhou-7 spacecraft will be the first spacecraft of China's manned space program in 2024, and it will also be the first spacecraft of the "Shenzhou-17" crew in orbit.
The downward and upward movements of "Tianzhou-6" and "Tianzhou-7" will respectively carry out the removal and transportation of waste and garbage and the upward movement of new materials for the space station, and will support the "Shenzhou-17" crew and the space station assembly to meet the mission challenges of the new year with a new attitude and make new breakthroughs
Author: Mulan Xingzhou.