If an emergency arises aboard China’s Tiangong area station within the subsequent few days, its three astronaut residents could possibly be in bother.
That trio — members of the Shenzhou 21 mission — arrived at Tiangong on Oct. 31 for a six-month keep. However their deliberate journey house is already gone. On Thursday night time (Nov. 13), the Shenzhou 21 spacecraft carried three completely different astronauts away from the station — members of the Shenzhou 20 mission, whose personal automobile was deemed unfit to hold individuals again to Earth after being broken by a space-debris strike.
China retains a Lengthy March 2F rocket and Shenzhou spacecraft “in a state of close to readiness” at Jiuquan Satellite tv for pc Launch Middle as a matter of coverage throughout crewed missions, as SpaceNews’ Andrew Jones famous. If one thing goes incorrect on Tiangong, this standby lifeboat could be launched to the station as little as 8.5 days later.
That countdown has doubtless already begun for the Shenzhou 21 crew, as the dearth of a protected journey dwelling positively qualifies as a contingency.
Certainly, Chinese language area officers have already mentioned that the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft can be launched to Tiangong (presumably with out anybody on board). They did not give a timeline, saying solely that the liftoff will happen “at an acceptable time sooner or later.”
But it surely’s protected to imagine that launch day is close to; the nation absolutely would not need to expose its astronauts to any extra threat than is important, and day by day spent in orbit with out a lifeboat is a threat.
The Shenzhou 21 astronauts’ plight calls to thoughts the expertise of NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who flew to the Worldwide House Station (ISS) in June 2024 on the first-ever crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner capsule.
Starliner suffered helium leaks and thruster points on the way in which up, and NASA finally determined to carry the spacecraft again to Earth uncrewed. That occurred with out incident in September 2024.
Wilmore and Williams, in the meantime, continued residing on the ISS till this previous March, turning a deliberate 10-day mission right into a almost nine-month affair. They finally got here dwelling on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule together with fellow NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexandr Gorbunov.
However the Shenzhou 21 astronauts are in a extra precarious spot for the time being than Wilmore and Williams ever have been. There have been all the time non-Starliner lifeboats docked to the ISS in the course of the NASA astronauts’ orbital keep, they usually may have squeezed into considered one of these craft for a cramped journey dwelling if one thing had gone terribly incorrect on the ISS.
That does not appear to be an possibility for Tiangong’s present residents: The Shenzhou 20 spacecraft, the one crew-capable automobile docked to the station for the time being, sports activities tiny cracks in considered one of its home windows due to the particles strike.
“The Shenzhou-20 spacecraft doesn’t meet the necessities for the astronauts’ protected return and can stay in orbit to proceed related experiments,” the state-run Xinhua information outlet reported on Thursday, citing data from the China Manned House Company.
Shenzhou 21 is the tenth crewed mission to Tiangong, a three-module station that is about 20% as large because the ISS.
The mission consists of commander Zhang Lu, 48, who additionally flew on Shenzhou 15 in 2022, and two spaceflight rookies, Zhang Hongzhang and Wu Fei. Wu has the excellence of being the youngest member of China’s astronaut corps.
