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While life on the International Space Station goes on quite calmly (except for the problem with Progress MS-21), work on board the Chinese space station Tiangong continue thanks to the mission crew Shenzhou-15 came on board late last year to give “the change” to those of Shenzhou-14 who returned shortly after thus ending their mission.
During these weeks various works and activities of various kinds have been carried out but still none extravehicular activity (or EVA or “spacewalk”). Things changed on February 9, 2023, when two Chinese astronauts stepped outside the Chinese space station to perform some operations. This is by no means the first EVA by a crew aboard Tiangong given that several had also been carried out in the past.
The first extravehicular activity for Shenzhou-15 astronauts
Although it is almost certain that the astronauts of Shenzhou-15 would have performed an EVA during their stay on board, CNSA extension And CMSA extension have maintained a higher confidentiality than seen in the past. Of course, the communication level of the Chinese on the subject of Space is still far from what we are used to with NASA and ESA (for example), but there had been tentative attempts to open up over the past few months.
But something has changed with this one extravehicular activity considering that the information has been officially released by the CNSA only a short time before the actual start. According to what was reported, the total duration was around 7 hours, with the activities ending at 5.16 pm (Italian time) on 9 February 2023. The captain came out of the airlock Fei Junlong And Zhang Lu While Deng Qingming he monitored the situation from within helping colleagues.
The two taikonauts they used the laboratory module’s airlock Wentian (launched in July last year). Among the tasks performed during the first extravehicular activity Of Shenzhou-15 there was the installation of a pump linked to the thermal regulation system of the Mengtian module (the latest arrival in orbit). Each module has at least one allowing you to manage the temperatures related to exposure to the sun or not. It is interesting to note how these pumps can be simply replaced in the event of failures or updates, as reported by CGT extension.
Still on Mengtian, work was done in the airlock area and in particular for the management of payloads such as scientific experiments and small satellites (Cubesat) through a robotic arm. Outside this module it is already possible to install scientific experiments which can thus be placed not only in microgravity but also in contact with the space environment (the first time this happened in January 2023).
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