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Simulated image captured at on July 25, 2022 shows that Wentian lab module has docked with the front port of Tianhe core module combination. [Photo\/Xinhua]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n<\/p>\n \u3000\u3000The Wentian lab module of China’s Tiangong space station has been repositioned to dock with a radial port on the station’s Tianhe core module on Friday afternoon, which marked a key step in Tiangong’s in-orbit assembly, according to the China Manned Space Agency.<\/p>\n \u3000\u3000The agency said in a news release that during the hour-long operation that finished at 12:44 pm, Wentian was moved from the axial port of Tianhe to a radial port of the core module. The maneuver was carried out based on cooperation between astronauts inside the Tiangong and ground controllers.<\/p>\n \u3000\u3000After the operation, the Tiangong station is now L-shaped and will remain in that shape until the docking with the Mengtian lab module that is scheduled to be launched around year’s end, the agency noted.<\/p>\n \u3000\u3000Wentian was launched in late July from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province to connect with the Tianhe core module.<\/p>\n \u3000\u3000With its 23-ton weight and 17.9-meter length, Wentian is currently the largest and heaviest spacecraft China has ever built and also the world’s heaviest self-propelled spaceship in service.<\/p>\n \u3000\u3000Inside the gigantic lab, there are eight scientific cabinets. They are mainly used to serve biological and life science studies and can support research on the growth, aging and genetic traits of plants, animals and microbes in the space environment.<\/p>\n \u3000\u3000Wentian also has 22 extravehicular payload adapters capable of carrying scientific equipment needed for experiments that require exposure to the space environment, cosmic rays, vacuum and solar winds.<\/p>\n \u3000\u3000By now, three groups of Chinese astronauts have lived and worked inside the Tiangong space station, which now consists of the Tianhe module, the Wentian lab, the Shenzhou XIV spacecraft, and the Tianzhou 4 cargo ship.<\/p>\n \u3000\u3000The current habitants \u2013 the three crew members of the Shenzhou XIV mission \u2013 have spent nearly four months in it and have carried out two spacewalks. They are to stay in the station until early December, when the Shenzhou XV crew will take over.<\/p>\n \u3000\u3000The Mengtian space lab, Tiangong’s second lab component, is scheduled to be launched in October.<\/p>\n \u3000\u3000Scientific equipment onboard will be used for microgravity studies and to carry out experiments in fluid physics, materials science, combustion science and fundamental physics, mission planners have said.<\/p>\n \u3000\u3000Once Mengtian is connected to Tiangong, the station will be T-shaped and astronauts will have as much as 110 cubic meters of usable space.<\/p>\n \u3000\u3000If you have any problems with this article, please contact us at app@chinadaily.com.cn and we’ll immediately get back to you.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Simulated image captured at on July 25, 2022 shows that Wentian lab module has docked with the front port of Tianhe core module combination. [Photo\/Xinhua] \u3000\u3000The Wentian lab module of China’s Tiangong space station has been repositioned to dock with a radial port on the station’s Tianhe core module on Friday afternoon, which marked a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4367"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}