Shenzhou-19 Crew Welcomes Shenzhou-20 Taikonauts
The two crews have met onboard the Tiangong Space Station.
Following launch from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center earlier today, the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft docked to Tianhe’s Earth-facing docking port on the Tiangong Space Station at 23:49 pm China Standard Time (15:49 pm Universal Coordinated Time). Launch to docking took six hours and thirty-two minutes.
Following a series of checks, the hatches between the Shenzhou spacecraft and Tianhe were opened with Cai Xuzhe (蔡旭哲), Song Lingdong (宋令东), and Wang Haoze (王浩泽) of the Shenzhou-19 mission greeting Shenzhou-20’s Chen Dong (陈冬), Chen Zhongrui (陈中瑞), and Wang Jie (王杰).
For now, the two crews will spend almost five days working together while the new crew adjusts to life in microgravity. A ‘key’ handover ceremony will take place before the Shenzhou-19 crew departs, for a return to Earth set on April 29th.
For their six-month mission, the Shenzhou-20 trio will conduct spacewalks to install more debris hardware, while science and technology experiments are planned. Some of those experiments are related to life sciences, such as one for a zebra fish-hornwort co-cultivation ecosystem, the expression patterns of microbial active substances and enzymes in space environments, and an investigation into the regeneration of planarians in microgravity. The planarian experiments will study tissue regeneration in microgravity, while the zebrafish experiment will focus on microgravity-caused loss of bone mass and cardiovascular dysfunction.
Additionally, the Tianzhou-9 cargo spacecraft will arrive later this year carrying fresh supplies, along with possibly the first visits from the Qingzhou (轻舟) and Haolong (昊龙) commercial cargo spacecraft.