China’s Shenzhou 14 astronauts have been busy testing a brand new space station module, conducting spacewalks and finishing up experiments — however they’ve additionally discovered time to take some spectacular images.
China’s human spaceflight company, CMSA, released the images taken by the astronauts aboard the Tiangong space station throughout their ongoing mission, which launched June 3.
Photographs taken by Cmdr. Chen Dong present one of many station’s versatile solar arrays in opposition to a backdrop of nighttime cities shining from Earth beneath, and one other photograph captures the airglow above our planet that outcomes when daylight interacts with atoms and molecules in Earth’s atmosphere.
Associated: China’s Shenzhou 14 astronauts mark busy 1st month aboard Tiangong space station
Liu Yang, whose earlier mission to space again in 2012 made her China’s first woman in orbit, additionally snapped some footage, together with certainly one of a full moon above Earth. Images taken by Cai Xuzhe on his first journey to space embrace a picture of Hainan island, simply off the Chinese language mainland, from the place the Tiangong modules launched, and a tomato plant sprouting aboard the station.
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Shenzhou 14 is the third crewed mission to Tiangong. Throughout the first, Shenzhou 12, astronauts additionally returned stunning images.
The Shenzhou 14 crew is scheduled to obtain a brand new customer later this month, when the third and ultimate module for Tiangong is launched. The Mengtian module will full the deliberate T-shaped orbital outpost.
The crewmembers are anticipated to remain in orbit till someday in December, when they are going to welcome the incoming Shenzhou 15 mission astronauts and perform China’s first-ever crew handover.
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