A confirmation has arrived that three Chinese taikonauts from the Shenzhou 19 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 8th 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 19 mission are:
Cai Xuzhe is the commander, a senior colonel (a rank equivalent to a brigadier general) of the Chinese Air Force. He’s the veteran of the mission, as he already served on the Tiangong space station between June and December 2022 as part of the Shenzhou 14 mission. He started that mission when the station consisted only of the Tianhe core module and in the following months the Wentian and Mengtian space laboratories were put into orbit to form the current station’s configuration.
Song Lingdong was born in August 1990 and is a pilot of the Chinese Air Force selected as part of the third batch of taikonauts. He is at his first space mission.
Wang Haoze was born in March 1990 and is a lieutenant colonel of the Chinese Air Force. She is the first female aerospace engineer to become a taikonaut as part of the third batch of taikonauts. She is at her first space mission.
It was announced that the taikonauts of the Shenzhou 18 mission will return to Earth on November 4, so they met with their replacements from the Shenzhou 19 mission and the two crews will work together for a few days. The meeting between crews during the rotation is now a practice that allows the station to be constantly inhabited.
The Chinese authorities never reveal much about the activities that the taikonauts conduct on the Tiangong space station beyond general information on scientific experiments, educational activities conducted for Chinese students, outreach to the general population, and possible spacewalks. In this case, the news concerns the installation of protective equipment against space debris.
It’s been two years since the completion of the first phase of construction of the Tiangong space station and the work of the taikonauts already seems routine. The developments of the ambitious Chinese space program continue without great proclamations step by step with various objectives that are revealed when the authorities deem it appropriate.
