A little while ago, the three Chinese taikonauts of the Shenzhou 14 mission returned to Earth after spending almost six months on the Chinese space station Tiangong. The three taikonauts Cai Xuzhe, Chen Dong, and Liu Yang departed the station a few hours earlier to land at a site called Dongfeng in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. A procedure that significantly reduces the time to return to Earth worked perfectly again.
A confirmation has arrived that three Chinese taikonauts from the Shenzhou 15 mission reached the Chinese space station Tiangong with an automated docking maneuver. They blasted off about seven hours earlier on a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. They form the fourth crew of the Chinese space station and will remain there for about six months, the standard duration for a mission.
A little while ago, SpaceX’s Dragon 2 spacecraft docked with the International Space Station’s Harmony module completing the first leg of its mission. It blasted off on a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in its CRS-26 (Cargo Resupply Service 26) mission, also referred to as SpX-2, on Saturday, when it was the afternoon in the USA. Astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann monitored the operation but the cargo spacecraft completed the maneuvers in an automated way without any problems.
A little while ago, NASA’s Orion spacecraft separated from the last stage, called the ICPS (Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage), of the Space Launch System (SLS), which blasted off almost two hours earlier from the Kennedy Space Center. The Orion entered the trajectory that will take it into the Moon’s orbit to carry out its mission which will last about 25 days. This is the first launch for the SLS and for the Orion in its full configuration. The ICPS also has the secondary mission of putting some CubeSat-class nanosatellites into orbit.
Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft, launched last Monday, November 7, has just reached the International Space Station and was captured by the Canadarm2 robotic arm. Astronaut Nicole Mann, assisted by her colleague Josh Cassada, will soon begin the slow maneuver to move the Cygnus until it docks with the Station’s Unity module after about two hours.
