Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond.
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ATV's initial flash as it broke apart in Earth's atmosphere. Credit: ESA
A spectacular video recorded on September 29 shows the Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (A T V)plunging through Earth’s atmosphere and breaking apart. It doesn’t take long for the action to start — about 7 seconds into the video, there’s a bright flash — which portrays the demise of the first and very successful space station freighter ship built by the European Space Agency. Two observation teams were chasing Jules Verne, in two separate aircraft, taking video and images. This video shows the spacecraft breaking up over the Pacific Ocean beginning at about 15:36 CEST. Below are more images, too:
Jules Verne launched on March 9, 2008 on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The ATV delivered 6 tonnes of cargo to the International Space Station, and remained docked to the ISS for five months. During docked operations, it also performed a maneuver to help the ISS avoid a piece of space debris. For more info on Jules Verne see some of our past articles here (yesterday’s article about the deorbit), or here, describing about how great it was, and here, when it pulled into port at the ISS.
Here’s a few images of the breakup, and farther below is an image of the interior of Jules Verne as it was docked to the ISS, and finally, an image of the ATV as it undocked from the station on Sept. 5. Au revoir Jules Verne!
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A shower of debris results as the ATV continues its plunge through the atmosphere. Credit: ESAExpedition 16 and 17 crewmembers inside Jules Verne ATV. Jules Verne is Europe's first Automated Transfer Vehicle. Jules Verne docked with the International Space Station on 3 April 2008. Credit: NASAATV after it undocked from the ISS on Sept. 5. Credit: NASA
Clouds on Mars are producing snow. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University
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Remember the movies of clouds floating above the Phoenix Lander? Further study with the lander’s Lidar instrument has detected snow falling from Martian clouds. “The clouds are composed of ice crystals, and some of the crystals are large enough to fall through the atmosphere,” said Jim Whiteway, lead scientist for the Meteorological Station on Phoenix. Whiteway and several researchers shared recent findings from Phoenix at a press briefing today. “So snow is falling from the clouds and we are going to be watching very closely over the next month for evidence that the snow is actually landing on the surface. This is a very important factor in the hydrological cycle on Mars, with the exchange of water between the surface and the atmosphere.”
“Nothing like this view has ever been seen on Mars,” Whiteway added.
From Phoenix images and data, scientists have observed water condensing in the atmosphere. In recent weeks, as the temperatures fall in onset of winter on Mars’ northern plains, frost, ground fog and clouds are prevalent. “This is now occurring every night,” said Whiteway. “The Lidar is able to probe the inner structure of the clouds. It emits pulses of light upward into the atmosphere and detects what is scattered back. The laser emits pulses of light 100 times per second, so if you were standing beside the lander looking upward, you’d see a continuous green beam.” Data and images of the beam show bright spots in beam is where it is reflecting off ice crystals, and also where it reflects off clouds, a few miles above the surface.
The snow starts falling from a height of 4 km and fall down to 2 km. At that point the observations stopped, as they were initially set up for a limited amount of time. Further observations will be done to see if the snow is actually falling down to the surface of the planet.
Other experiments with Martian soil have provided evidence of past interaction between minerals and liquid water. Two different instruments have detected calcium carbonate and clays. On Earth, these form only in the presence of liquid water.
How much calcium carbonate or clays are in the soil hasn’t been fully quantified yet, said Bill Boynton, lead scientist for the TEGA Instrument (Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer) But at least 3-6 per cent of the soil is calcium carbonate, and about 1 per cent is clay. There were suspicions of carbonates in Mars soil, and now both the TEGA and the MECA instruments have verified their presence.
Both TEGA, and the microscopy part of MECA, have also turned up hints of a clay-like substance. “We are seeing smooth-surfaced, platy particles with the atomic-force microscope, not inconsistent with the appearance of clay particles,” said Michael Hecht, MECA lead scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
However, finding perchlorates in the soil leads to somewhat of a contradiction, as perchlorates would be sensitive to any water present. If large amounts of water were present in the past, the perchlorates should have dissolved. But they didn’t.
Another clue to the Mars soil puzzle is the dryness of the soil. The lander’s thermal and conductivity probe has indicated the soil is extremely dry around the lander, even though just under the surface, ice is present. “The dryness of the soil is a mystery here,” said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith. “We’re wondering if the perchlorate is absorbing or sucking up the water. We say dry because there aren’t any thin films of liquid water mixed with salts in the soil.” If percholate are mixed with water, brines could form, but the scientists have not seen evidence of a brine or remnants of a brine with cameras on board Phoenix. Perchlorates, however, are useful to microbes, which can use it as an energy source. “It’s an Interesting material to find on Mars, and there will be more research coming to find out what it might mean on Mars,” said Smith.
Another finding discussed was the pH levels of the soil. Hecht said the pH of the soil has been determined to be 8.3, which is lower than initially thought. Hecht said this is almost exactly the pH of ocean water on Earth, and the calcium carbonate may be responsible for this level of pH. Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Imperial College London
Hecht also discussed the unique images from the microscopes on board Phoenix. The first image, shows the soil is mostly composed of fine orange particles, and also contains larger grains, about a tenth of a millimeter in diameter, and of various colors. The soil is sticky, keeping together as a slab of material on the supporting substrate even when the substrate is tilted to the vertical.
The fine orange grains are at or below the resolution of the Optical Microscope. Mixed into the soil is a small amount – about 0.5 percent – of white grains, possibly of a salt. The larger grains range from black to almost transparent in appearance. At the bottom of the image, the shadows of the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) beams are visible. This image is 1 millimeter x 2 millimeters. Colored magnetic particles in Mars soil. Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Imperial College London
The second image shows a cluster of colored particles. “The reason they are all clustered like that is because they are strongly magnetic,” said Hecht. “All the fine red stuff has fallen off leaving all these little “Easter eggs” of all different colors and shapes. The particles are rounded because they’ve been tumbled by the wind across the sand and they’ve been polished. You also see a lot of angular particles that are clear, that are very white as if they are salts. So we can start to see the different animals in the zoo of Martian mineralogy.” Phoenix’s atomoic force microscope will be used in the coming weeks, and Hecht said the team should be able to provide a catalog of different particles found in these images.
A major failure on the Hubble Space Telescope has shut down science operations, as the spacecraft is unable to send any data to Earth, according to an article on NASA Spaceflight.com. The failure is on the “Side A” control system. There is also a back-up system, Side B which has never been used. Attempts will be made to switch to Side B later this week. This switch has never been attempted during the lifetime of the telescope, but it is hoped that the switch will work, allowing the HST to return to functionality. This may have an impact on the STS-125’s mission to repair the Hubble, delaying it to 2009, if managers decide to send up a replacement unit, or if a mitigation plan fails to restore the Telescope’s functionality.
Update: NASA held a news conference this afternoon, and said the servicing mission — which was going to launch on Oct. 14 — is definitely on hold. They will attempt to turn on Side B later this week, and depending on how that goes, they are working on a plan to have the shuttle servicing mission bring up and install a spare Science Instrument Command and Data Handling System sometime in 2009. Phil has the dicey details over at Bad Astronomy
Information obtained by NASA Spaceflight.com reads as follows:
“Side A of the CUSDF (Control Unit/Science Data Formatter) in HST went into safe hold, this means science operations have stopped. The spacecraft is still operational but unable to operate the instruments,” noted information acquired by L2.
“Attempts to recover the A side have failed so the project is now working to transfer science operations to the B side, this requires transferring the whole spacecraft from Side A to Side B so its a significant operation.
“Side B side has not been operated on orbit, for HST’s entire on orbit service life it has operated on Side A. However, the B side was fully tested before launch.
“The plan as of now is to complete the transfer to the B side later this week. The details for this will be provided later by the project.
“If the B side comes up fine we could still launch on time so I propose that we do not postpone the (Agency) FRR (Flight Readiness Review) at this time.
“If the B side does not come on line then we clearly have no mission as there is no way to get science data down. ”
“Options are in work. Earlier we had a plan to launch STS-126 first in November and follow up with HST in Feb. with the Feb. 2009 flight as back-up,” says a memo obtained by NASA Spaceflight.com
ESA's ATV Control Room following de-orbit burn. Credit: ESA
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Europe’s Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) successfully completed its six-month mission today with a controlled destructive re-entry over the South Pacific. Following a final de-orbit burn at 14:58 CEST which slowed its velocity by 70 m/s, the ATV entered the upper atmosphere at an altitude of 120 km at 15:31 CEST. It broke up at an altitude of 75 km with the remaining fragments falling into the Pacific some 12 minutes later. The break-up was monitored by two aircraft, a Gulfstream V, and a NASA DC-8. “The operations went perfectly; there was no hiccup at all.” said ESA’s mission director Alberto Novelli. “There is a very big feeling of accomplishment because the mission went perfectly from end to end. At the same time we are a little bit sad. The six months (of operation) were very intense and demanding, so there is a mixed feeling. But we are looking forward to start preparing for the following mission.” Update: the first images from the re-entry have just been posted: ATV re-entry. Credit: ESA
Composite of the ISS and ATV as seen from Earth. Credit: Ralf Vandebergh
This first ATV launched on March 9, 2008 on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Named the Jules Verne, it delivered 6 tonnes of cargo to the International Space Station, and remained docked to the ISS for five months. During docked operations, it also performed a maneuver to help the ISS avoid a piece of space debris. The crew was able to offload 12 tonnes of waste into the Jules Verne, most of which should have been destroyed in the re-entry. Another image of the ATV re-entry. Credit: ESA
A group of researchers used imaging instruments and spectrographs on board the two aircraft to document the re-entry. Both aircraft are suited to flying at the high altitude needed to perform the observations (12 to 14 km). They measured the brightness of the fragments, obtained positional information and saw how the brightness of the vehicle changes over time, giving an indication of how the spacecraft is tumbling. The spectrograph measures emissions from the atmosphere as the re-entry occurs, which provides information of the flow of the atmosphere around the vehicle. As they analyze their data, they will also be able to see emissions from the vehicle and contents as they break apart, give a detailed understanding of what’s happening to the ATV as it re-entered the atmosphere. Researchers monitored the ATV's re-entry from two aircraft. Credit: ESA
“Credit has to go to everyone involved in such a flawless mission.” said John Ellwood, ESA’s ATV Project Manager. “Not only to the ESA and industrial teams that brought the project to fruition, but also to the teams at the ATV Control Centre and around the world who have done a superb job while the spacecraft has been in orbit. This is truly a wonderful spacecraft, and vital to the continued service of the ISS following Shuttle retirement in 2010. I look forward to the launch of the next ATV, which is currently under production at EADS Astrium in Bremen, Germany.”
The face of future NASA launches? The SpaceX Falcon 1 blasts off (SpaceX)
The commercial spaceflight company Space X successfully launched its Falcon 1 unmanned booster, becoming the first private company to send a rocket into orbit. The two-stage rocket lifted off at 7:16 p.m. EDT (23:16 GMT) from the the launch site on the Kwajalein Atoll in the about 2,500 miles (4,023 km) southwest of Hawaii. This successful launch comes almost two months after an engine timing error during stage separation caused the failure of Space X’s third Falcon 1 test. If you missed watching the live webcast, below is the video. Watching the live webcast was wonderful; the people who actually built this rocket could be heard cheering in the background as each milestone in the climb to orbit was reached. Congratulations to everyone at Space X!
After the Falcon 1 reached orbit, an elated Elon Musk, Space X CEO told his cheering employees, “As the saying goes, the fourth time’s the charm.” He said this is just the first step for Space X, and added “This is one of the best days of my life.”
SpaceX’s first three attempts to launch the Falcon 1 all failed, with different problems occurring on each try. But today, after a uneventful countdown, the two-stage rocket operated flawlessly, bringing a dummy payload to Earth orbit. “This was the smoothest launch countdown of all,” Musk said. “It just shows the team is getting more and more practice at this.”
The Falcon 1 is a two stage, liquid oxygen and rocket grade kerosene (RP-1) powered launch vehicle. It is designed from the ground up by Space X, with no government assistance. Space X has about 500 employees.
As winner of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) competition, SpaceX is designing and building the Falcon 9 human-rated launch vehicle and Dragon spaceship to transport cargo and then astronauts to the International Space Station.
Space X’s mission is to provide launch vehicles at low cost and high reliability. This success could be the beginning of a new era in spaceflight.
Fusionman soars across the English Channel. Credit: Times Online
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In May, Swiss adventurer Yves Rossy, who calls himself “Fusionman,” flew with a jetpack strapped to his back for just 5 minutes. Today he soared from France to England across the English Channel, becoming the first person to cross the 35 km (22 miles) body of water in such a way. Rossy, a pilot who normally flies an Airbus airliner, was dropped from an airplane over France and used his specially made jetpack, flying at speeds of up to 193 kph (120 mph) to make the crossing in 13 minutes. “Everything was perfect,” he said afterwards. “I showed that it is possible to fly a little bit like a bird.” See more images and video below.
The 22-mile flight from Calais to Dover took 10 minutes (National Geographic/BSkyB)
The 49-year-old Rossy, told the BBC the most tense moment was when he jumped from the aircraft “because I did have many problems during exits before.” He ignited the four kerosene-burning jets on the jetpack inside a plane before jumping out more than 2,440 meters (8,000 feet) above ground. He made a perfect exit and quickly set the correct course by aiming for the cliffs of Dover. After a period of free fall he opened the wing and soared across the water. With no steering controls, the only way to change direction was like a bird, moving his head and back.
About 15 minutes later Rossy parachuted towards his landing site near Dover after making the crossing (Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty)
Rossy’s jet-powered wing, which spans eight feet, is made of lightweight carbon composite and weighs about 55 kg (120 lb) including fuel. Rossy has to wear a flameproof suit to help him withstand the jet exhaust around his legs.
When the white cliffs of Dover came into view, he opened a blue and yellow parachute and drifted down in light winds to land in a British field where he was mobbed by well-wishers. The Swiss pilot Yves Rossy is sprayed with champagne near Dover after flying with jet-propelled wings across the Channel from France (Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty)
Rossy celebrated his flight with a champagne shower. He had postponed the flight twice earlier this week due to poor weather.
His future plans include flying over the Grand Canyon, taking off from a standing position on the ground and performing acrobatics.
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Scientifically speaking, where is the best place on the Moon to set up a colony for research? Hands down, it has to be the Moon’s south pole. Mountainous areas near the rim of Shackelton Crater provide areas of almost continual sunlight, meaning solar power would be constantly available. In addition, the shadowed craters are in constant darkness and may hold water ice, a potential water supply that would be a vital resource for any lunar base. Plus it would be a great place to set up a lunar telescope. Recently, three-dimensional views of this region were released by the European Space Agency, taken by the SMART-1 spacecraft, providing unprecedented details of what has been called the “Peak of Eternal Light.” Moon base designers, take a look…
This image from the Clementine mission shows seven possible colony sites on the Moon’s south pole. Circled in red the highest mountain, the so-called “Peak of Eternal Light.”
View of “Peak of Eternal Light”. The Shackleton Crater is just off the image on the right hand side. Potential landing site 4 from the Clementine mosaic is on the left hand ridge of the peak. The small crater in the centre of the image is about 1 kilometre across. Credit: ESA/SMART-1/Space-X (Space Exploration Institute)
The images were taken by the AMIE camera on board the SMART-1, which has since plunged into the moon’s surface in a planned crash in 2006. The camera team has been working with the data to create digital elevation model of the peaks.
“AMIE is not a stereo camera, so producing a 3-D model of the surface has been a challenge,” said researcher Dr. Detlef Koschny. “We’ve used a technique where we use the brightness of reflected light to determine the slope and, by comparing several images, put together a model that produces a shadow pattern that matches those observed by SMART-1.” View of “Peak of Eternal Light” from the rim of the Shackleton Crater. The peak is along the ridge in the centre of the image. The possible landing sites 1 & 2 from the Clementine mosaic are in the bottom right hand corner of the image. Credit: ESA/SMART-1/Space-X (Space Exploration Institute)
AMIE took a total of 113 images of the peak, located close to the rim of the Shackleton Crater. The team, led by Dr Bjorn Grieger of ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre in Madrid, took five of the best images showing the peak illuminated from different angles. They mapped all the pixels onto a grid, defining the bright and dark areas. The data from the five images were then compared to produce estimates of the slope angles and the rendered elevation model was iteratively adjusted to produce a shadow match. The original AMIE images were then projected onto the retrieved model. To clearly visualise the topography, the elevation has been exaggerated five times. Here’s the elevation map: Digital elevation map. Credit: ESA/SMART-1/Space-X (Space Exploration Institute
Deformation bands on Mars. credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
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NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed hundreds of small fractures exposed on the Martian surface that billions of years ago directed flows of water through underground Martian sandstone. Researchers used images from the spacecraft’s HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera. Images of layered rock deposits at equatorial Martian sites show the clusters of fractures to be a type called deformation bands, caused by stresses below the surface in granular or porous bedrock. “Groundwater often flows along fractures such as these, and knowing that these are deformation bands helps us understand how the underground plumbing may have worked within these layered deposits,” said Chris Okubo of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Ariz.
Visible effects of water on the color and texture of rock along the fractures provide evidence that groundwater flowed extensively along the fractures. “These structures are important sites for future exploration and investigations into the geological history of water and water-related processes on Mars,” Okubo and co-authors state in a report published online this month in the Geological Society of America Bulletin. Deformation bands in the Four Corners region of the US. Credit: Jon E. Olson
Deformation band clusters in Utah sandstones, as on Mars, are a few meters or yards wide and up to a few kilometers or miles long. They form from either compression or stretching of underground layers, and can be precursors to faults. The ones visible at the surface have become exposed as overlying layers erode away. Deformation bands and faults can strongly influence the movement of groundwater on Earth and appear to have been similarly important on Mars, according to this study.
“This study provides a picture of not just surface water erosion, but true groundwater effects widely distributed over the planet,” said Suzanne Smrekar, deputy project scientist for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “Groundwater movement has important implications for how the temperature and chemistry of the crust have changed over time, which in turn affects the potential for habitats for past life.”
Deformation bands form when sections of rock slide past each other and are similar to faults, such as the much larger San Andreas Fault in southern California. The discovery of deformation bands in HiRISE images advances understanding of how underground fractures would have affected the distribution and availability of ancient groundwater on Mars.
The HiRISE camera took the top image of layered rocks inside a crater in the Arabia Terra region of Mars on Feb. 13, 2007. The site is at 6.6 degrees north latitude, 14.1 degrees east longitude. Illumination is from the left. North is toward the top. The ground covered in this image spans about 150 meters (about 500 feet) east to west.
In a bold move, astronomers have begun a new search to understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of intelligent life in the universe. Called WETI, which stands for Wait for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, the institute employs an entirely novel approach to achieve its goals. Instead of actively searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, the idea is to simply wait: Wait until the ETs find us. “Waiting is a notoriously underappreciated method in our efforts to search for extraterrestrial intelligence,” says the WETI website. “It is cheaper and less stressful than any other type of research. It is also environmentally friendly and does not cause global warming, terrorism or nuclear conflicts.” WETI’s overall objective? To set a new gold standard for scientifically meaningful waiting, and to provide humankind a new purpose as they wait.
The work of WETI was recently highlighted at the Dot Astronomy Conference on Networked Astronomy and the New Media. WETI officials overcame several problems, and were able to present a poster at the conference. Then they went out for drinks, presumably to make the waiting more enjoyable.
The poster introduces the very foundations of WETI, which includes the breakthrough “Brake Equation.” See the poster for more details.
In the near future, whenever they get around to it, WETI will provide a downloadable computer program that will make use of the idle time of your computer to very efficiently wait in the background. “Modern computers can wait several million times each second,” says WETI. “By exploiting this currently unused waiting potential we will collectively create the biggest waiting power ever applied to any problem on earth.”
I contacted the WETI Institute for more information and was pleasantly surprised that I did not have to wait very long for a reply. An Aleks Scholz, the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of WETI, responded to my inquiries. When asked about the response WETI has received thus far, Scholz said,” Generally positive, with a slight inclination of being confused at first, plus occasional cases of consternation. So far, however, there were no medically relevant problems related to the responses to WETI.”
The history of the WETI Institute appears to be long and muddled. “We are still working on tracking down the roots of our organization,” said Scholz. “Most of us, however, believe that it was Knarps Hoselton who originally provided the stimulus for the WETI movement with his inspirational piece of research ‘On Some Philosophical Implications of Throwing Small Stones into a Big Body of Water’ in the early 80s. Today, Hoselton is Senior Astronomer and holds the Bruno Moravetz Chair Emeritus at the WETI Institute.” In more recent years, Scholz himself, an astronomer at the University of St. Andrews, picked up on Hoselton’s revolutionary ideas and suggested combining them with networking technology. This was the beginning of the WETI Institute.
When asked how long we may have to wait for results from this new initiative, Scholz said, “We prefer to see each day of WETI as a ‘result’, providing us with one bit of information about the nature of extraterrestrial intelligence– they are somewhere else. The non-presence of aliens on planet Earth is as useful for science as their presence would be. We will not accept any notion that waiting is only useful if, finally, something happens. Instead, we consider waiting a fulfilling scientific method in its own right.”
So, is this a joke? Maybe. Or maybe not. “It seems appropriate to ponder the actual usefulness of WETI” says the WETI website. “Where do we come from? Where do we go? Can we have coffee in between?” Well, thanks to the WETI Institute, the process of answering these questions turns into a social experience – a global, conscious waiting process. With WETI, everyone at least knows that they are waiting. This provides new purpose to humankinds’ seemingly eternal waiting. We can all now wait with fierce determination.
If you find yourself not very adept at waiting, Scholz offered a few tips. “With our expertise, we can suggest a number of things: The long-established technique of fiddling your thumbs, for example, is a good start. You might also want to take a sheet of graph paper and fill in all the squares with a soft pencil. When you are finished, you could arrange for a nice cup of tea, just for a change. Finally, procrastination is always a valid option. Surely there is something you should be doing right now. Concentrate your energies on not doing it.”
In the words of Galaxy Zoo’s Chris Lintott, “This is both brilliant, and completely mad.”
Update: You can now join WETI’s “think tank,” the Effortless Action Committee. When you do you can receive an attractive certificate suitable for framing immediately — no waiting!
China successfully launched its third manned spacecraft today with three astronauts on board. During the mission, they will attempt the country’s first-ever space walk. The Long March II-F rocket carrying the Shenzhou-7 spacecraft blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the northwestern Gansu Province at 9:10 p.m. local time. Onboard pilots Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng are will orbit Earth for three days. The astronauts, called taikonauts, told the ground control center that they felt “physically sound” in the first few minutes of the flight.
Two of the taikonauts will conduct a spacewalk, wearing Chinese-made spacesuits called Feitian which literally means flying in the sky, and is the name of a legendary Buddhist goddess. They will retrieve test samples loaded on the outside of the spacecraft, said Zhou Jianping, chief designer of the country’s manned space project.
“We wish we could fly freely in space just like Feitian on the ancient Buddhist murals, so we gave this name to the homemade spacesuit,” said Zhou. Chinese taikonauts inside Shenzou 7. Credit: Xinhuanet
The third taikonaut will remain inside the pressurized spacecraft, and will wear a Russian Orlan suit.
Other tasks of the Shenzhou-7 crew include the release of a small monitoring satellite and a trial of the data relay of the satellite Tianlian-I.
If successful, the mission would be of great significance to the country’s future plans to build a space lab and a space station, said Zhang Jianqi, deputy chief commander of the manned space project. “China pursues the principle of making peaceful use of space in its exploration and development,” Zhang said, adding the country was willing to carry out various forms of international cooperation in space exploration.
The taikonauts, all 42 years old, are scheduled to land in the central region of north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in a re-entry module after their mission is completed
