Shenzhou-20 taikonauts who are currently staying and working in the orbiting China Tiangong Space Station have opened the hatch of the Tianzhou-9 cargo spacecraft and entered the craft on Tuesday afternoon. They will carry out work including cargo transfer according to plan, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said on Tuesday.
Packed with a record 6.5 tons of cargo, the Tianzhou-9 spacecraft was launched successfully atop a Long March-7 Y10 carrier rocket from the tropical island province of Hainan early on Tuesday. After a rapid rendezvous and docking operation at 8:52 am with the rear port of the Tianhe core module of the space station that took around three hours, the Tianzhou-9 cargo craft entered the combined flight phase, the Global Times learned from the CMSA on Tuesday.
The Tianzhou-9 cargo mission marks the fourth of its kind during the application and development phase of the China Space Station. It is tasked with ferrying cargo, including supplies for the astronaut system and platform materials for the space station system, as well as experimental samples and equipment for space applications, aerospace medicine and space technology testing. These supplies will provide strong support for the space station's in-orbit operations and the long-term stay of taikonauts, mission insiders told the Global Times on Tuesday.
In terms of rendezvous and docking, China has successfully verified and implemented several approaches in orbit, including the 2-day, 6.5-hour, 2-hour, and now the 3-hour schemes. The three-hour rendezvous and docking mode used by the Tianzhou-9 cargo spacecraft is set to become the standard procedure for future Tianzhou missions for the foreseeable future.
Explaining why the three-hour approach is the best one, experts from the state-owned space giant China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC) told the Global Times that it offers a time advantage over the traditional 6.5-hour mode, while being less demanding than the two-hour mode. It relaxes requirements on orbital insertion accuracy, tracking and control precision, sensor and navigation accuracy, and guidance and control systems, thereby improving overall mission reliability, according to the CASC experts.
Experts pointed out that under China's current level of aerospace technology, the three-hour rendezvous and docking mode strikes the best balance between efficiency and reliability, making it the most cost-effective technical solution.
Having successfully achieved the three-hour fast rendezvous and docking which is the third time this fast-track approach has been achieved, following the Tianzhou-7 and Tianzhou-8 missions, it will pave the way for making this mode a new norm, said Li Zhiyong, a member of the Tianzhou spacecraft development team with CASC.
Previously, Global Times reporters learned from the Astronaut Center of China (ACC) that two sets of upgraded spacesuits for extravehicular activities, or spacewalks, and a new set of core muscle training devices, as well as around 30 new kinds of space food were onboard the Tianzhou-9 craft, which Yin Rui, an spokesperson of the ACC believes will bring significant enhancements and improvements for the taikonauts who are working and living in orbit.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences said the scientific and research payload that flew on Tianzhou-9 to the space station includes several firsts and it will shed light on future exploration at the Chinese permanent space outpost.
Among them, in the field of space life sciences and biotechnology, scientific experiments will be carried out using the biotechnology experiment cabinet aboard the Wentian lab module of the space station. These include new studies on the impact of the space environment on the human blood-brain barrier and brain function using organoid-on-a-chip technology for the first time, research on how the space microgravity environment affects the migration of skeletal muscle progenitor cells and the underlying mechanisms, as well as investigations into the biological functions of nucleic acid-lipid nanocarriers under microgravity conditions.
Regarding the brain organoid-on-a-chip research, Qin Jianhua, chief scientist at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Global Times on Tuesday that unlike traditional silicon-based chips, this brain organoid chip integrates multiple advanced biotechnologies. Derived from human pluripotent stem cells, it constructs a highly realistic miniature brain model on a chip about the size of a credit card, Qin said.
The chip features a rich cerebral microvascular network, neural cells, immune cells, and a structure and functionality that resemble the blood-brain barrier, enabling it to simulate the complex microenvironment of the human brain and its responses to external stimuli, he said.
Qin noted that this biomimetic model can be used to investigate how the space environment affects the human blood-brain barrier and brain function at the cellular, tissue and organ levels, and to explore the potential underlying mechanisms.
It offers tools for predicting and mitigating health risks associated with long-term spaceflight, he noted.
Gong Yongsheng, with the Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Global Times that the Tianzhou-9 was to deliver a total of 776.5 kilograms of application payloads including experimental payloads, experiment units, samples, critical spare parts and consumable materials, covering 23 scientific experiments.
The Tianzhou-9 mission also set a first in the manned space engineering sphere, the Global Times learned from the mission contractor CASC. China's space station logistics system has now, like the Shenzhou manned spacecraft system, also established its own "dual insurance" mechanism, further enhancing its emergency supply transport capability.
Before the launch of the Tianzhou-8 cargo spacecraft on November 15, 2024, Tianzhou-9 had already completed its full development and had entered a full-vehicle standby state, the first time China achieved a three-month contingency launch readiness for cargo missions.
By the time Tianzhou-9 was launched on Tuesday, the next cargo spacecraft was already prepared to serve as a mission backup, further boosting the safety and reliability of the space station's operations.
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