A little while ago, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner Calypso spacecraft blasted off atop a ULA Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral base on its Boe-CFT (Boeing Crew Flight Test) mission. After about fifteen minutes, it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage and soon it will start the maneuvers it needs to enter orbit and begin tracking the International Space Station.
Yesterday, the three Chinese taikonauts of the Shenzhou 17 mission returned to Earth after spending a little more than six months on the Chinese space station Tiangong. The three taikonauts Jiang Xinlin, Tang Hongbo, and Tang Shengjie had left the station about nine hours earlier to land at a site called Dongfeng in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It’s a procedure that significantly reduces the time to return to Earth and now has become routine.
A confirmation has arrived that three Chinese taikonauts from the Shenzhou 18 mission reached the Chinese space station Tiangong with an automated docking maneuver. They blasted off about 6.5 hours earlier atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. They form the 7th crew of the Chinese space station and will remain there for about six months, the standard duration for a mission.
The three taikonauts, as the Chinese call their astronauts, of the Shenzhou 18 mission are Ye Guangfu, Li Cong, and Li Guangsu.
A little while ago, cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Marina Vasilevskaya and astronaut Loral O’Hara returned to Earth on the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft, which landed in Kazakhstan. Novitsky completed a one-year mission on the International Space Station, Vasilevskaya was a visitor who stayed on the Station for a few days while O’Hara spent a bit more than 6 months on the Station.
A little while ago the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft, which blasted off about two days ago from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, has reached the International Space Station carrying one new crew member and two visitors. Astronaut Tracy Dyson of NASA is part of Expedition 70/71 while cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos and the Belarusian Marina Vasilevskaya will remain on the Station for a few days.
