Beijing: China on Sunday will launch the Shenzhou-14 manned mission to complete work on its permanent orbiting space station.
Chinese astronauts Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe will carry out the Shenzhou-14 spaceflight mission, which will be launched with a Long March-2F carrier rocket at around 10:44 am on Sunday (China time) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China.
During the mission, the crew is expected to complete the construction of the Tiangong space station with a basic three-module structure consisting of the core module Tianhe and the lab modules Wentian and Mengtian.
Shenzhou-14 will be the third of four crewed missions – and the seventh of a total of 11 missions – needed to complete the space station by the end of the year.
China began constructing its three-module space station in April 2021 with the launch of Tianhe – the first and biggest of the station’s three modules.
Tianhe, slightly larger than a metro bus, will form the living quarters of visiting astronauts once the T-shaped space station is completed.
Following Shenzhou-14, the remaining two modules – the laboratory cabins Wentian and Mengtian – will be launched in July and October, respectively.
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