Shenzhou XX crew members have begun to hold out takeover work of the Tiangong house station with the outgoing Shenzhou XIX astronauts.

The brand new arrivals — mission commander Senior Colonel Chen Dong and crew members Colonel Chen Zhongrui and Colonel Wang Jie — have been launched by a Lengthy March 2F service rocket on Thursday afternoon from the Jiuquan Satellite tv for pc Launch Middle.

After flying roughly six-and-a-half hours, their spaceship docked with the entrance port on the Tianhe core module — Tiangong station’s core element — at 11:49 pm, they usually started preparatory work to enter the house station, which included becoming intravehicular work fits from their stress fits and configuring their spaceship.

In the meantime, their Shenzhou XIX comrades — mission commander Senior Colonel Cai Xuzhe, Lieutenant Colonel Music Lingdong and Lieutenant Colonel Wang Haoze — waited contained in the connection cabin. In any case preparations have been completed, Cai’s staff opened a hatch within the connection cabin at 1:17 am to welcome the brand new staff of astronauts.

After embracing the Shenzhou XX comrades, Cai mentioned that he wished to congratulate Chen Dong for his return to the Tiangong, which implies Heavenly Palace in English, and likewise congratulated Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie for realizing their “spaceflight goals”. “Within the following days, allow us to work collectively to make our ‘house house’ higher,” he mentioned.

In response, Chen Dong mentioned, “It feels nice to return to the ‘house house’. Let’s make the most effective use of the following few days to complete the handover work.”

The six crew members then took group images to report the second which marks the sixth in-orbit rendezvous of Chinese language astronauts.

Each groups are scheduled to work collectively for about 5 days to make sure a clean handover, after which the Shenzhou XIX crew will return to Earth, with their reentry capsule scheduled for landing on Tuesday, mentioned the China Manned Area Company.

As members of China’s fifteenth manned spaceflight and the ninth group of residents aboard the Tiangong, the Shenzhou XX astronauts will perform quite a lot of duties over the following six months.