Shenzhou-17 astronauts complete second spacewalk
The scene looks familiar. Two crewmembers in spacesuits working on the exterior of an orbital facility high above Earth. But look closely and you’ll soon realize that this isn’t, as you may have assumed, the International Space Station. It’s actually China’s Tiangong station, which was completed in orbit in November 2022.
In recent days, taikonauts Hongbo Tang and Xinlin Jiang exited the Tiangong space station for a spacewalk that lasted eight hours.
Footage (top) from the extravehicular activity shows the two taikonauts at work outside the Wentian Laboratory Module, with Earth several hundred miles below. Tang Shengjie, the third member of the current Shenzhou 17 crew, assisted Tang and Jiang from inside the station, operating the facility’s robotic arm.
The taikonauts completed various asks during their lengthy spacewalk, including maintenance work on some of the facility’s solar panels.
While this was the second spacewalk performed by this particular crew, it was actually the 14th at the Tiangong space station overall.
Translated as “Heavenly Palace,” Tiangong began to take shape in orbit in 2021. It’s considerably smaller in size compared to the ISS as it only has three modules compared to the ISS’s 16. But similar to the ISS, visitors to Tiangong spend much of their time conducting science experiments in microgravity conditions. In future work, China will launch a powerful space telescope called Xuntian that will occasionally dock with Tiangong for upgrades and maintenance.
The launch of the Tiangong space station is a part of increased efforts by China to establish itself as a space superpower to compete with the U.S. It’s already had multiple successes beyond near-Earth orbit, including bringing samples of lunar rock to Earth and landing a rover on Mars. Its next big ambition is to put taikonauts on the moon before 2030.
Editors’ Recommendations
-
Jupiter’s icy moon Europa may be light on oxygen, lowering habitability hopes
-
U.S. spacecraft lands on the moon for the first time in over 50 years
-
Watch NASA test its next-gen spacesuit for ISS spacewalks
-
How to watch SpaceX launch Cygnus cargo ship to ISS for first time
-
NASA readies Starliner spacecraft for first crewed flight to ISS
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Axiom-3, the first private, all-European mission, arrives at the ISS
The Axiom-3 mission, the first commercial all-European mission to the International Space Station (ISS), has arrived safely at its destination. Following launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, January 18, using a Falcon 9 rocket, a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft arrived at the space station at 7:13 a.m. ET today, Saturday, January 20.
Ax-3 Mission | Approach & Docking
Read more
Watch Axiom Space’s first all-European mission blast off the launchpad
The first all-European commercial crew has launched safely from the Kennedy Space Center and is now on its way to the International Space Station.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the four-person crew for Axiom Space’s Axiom-3 mission blasted off the launchpad just before 4:50 p.m. ET (1:50 p.m. ET) on Thursday before climbing rapidly to orbit. Here’s some footage and images of the rocket heading to space:
Read more
NASA cracks open its first sample from an asteroid, foiling two sticky screws
NASA returned its first sample of an asteroid to Earth last year, landing a sample collected from asteroid Bennu in the Utah desert in September. Researchers were able to extract 70 grams of material from the canister that had been carried back to Earth by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, making this the largest asteroid sample ever brought to Earth. The scientists involved knew there was more material inside the mechanism, but getting at it proved difficult — until now, as NASA has announced it has now managed to open up the troublesome mechanism.
You might think it would be an easy job to unscrew a canister and dump out the material inside, but extraction was a lengthy and technical process. That’s because the focus was on preserving as much of the precious sample as possible, trying not to let any of the particles get lost. The issue was with two of the 25 fasteners that held the sample inside the collection mechanism. The mechanism is kept inside a glove box to prevent any loss, and there were only certain tools available that worked with the glove box. So when the fasteners wouldn’t open with the tools they had, the team couldn’t just go at them with any other tool.
Read more
