China’s youngest astronaut takes to space on Senzhou-19.
China launched the Shenzhou-19 crewed spaceship on Oct. 30, sending three astronauts to visit China’s space station for a six-month mission.
The crew represent many firsts for Chin. They include the country’s first female space engineer and China’s youngest astronaut.
The new crew comprises both familiar and new faces. Cai Xuzhe, previously on Shenzhou-14, returns as mission commander. There are also two young astronauts joining him. Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze, both born in the 1990s, make their first journey into space. Incidentally, Wang is only the third female Chinese astronaut, and also a pioneering spaceflight engineer.
Female Aerospace Engineer
China’s first female astronaut, Liu Yang, and the first woman to fly twice, Wang Yaping, have left a legacy of inspiration for young women. Wang Haoze hopes this flight will inspire a new generation of young women who perhaps believe space is indeed within their reach.
Wang Haoze’s journey is unique as she joins this mission as an aerospace engineer. She is responsible for the critical upkeep and operation of the spacecraft’s equipment. Unlike her bespectacled colleague Gui Haichao, a payload specialist, Wang Haoze manages the technical systems. What’s more, she is in charge of maintenance and repairs. Before joining the astronaut team, she was a rocket engineer. She has earned the affectionate nickname ‘the first Chinese rocket engineer to fly on a (real) rocket’.
Genetic Research in Space
The team will be visintg China’s Tiangong space station. The Shenzhou-19 team will undertake 86 science and technology experiments, covering everything from trying to grow plants in space to conducting genetics studies. Perhaps most intriguing is the ‘space farm’. Cai may pick up his lettuce-growing project from two years ago. And Song plans to cultivate sweet potatoes, giving the mission a gardening touch.
The mission will also test how fruit flies — a common model in genetic research due to their short lifespan and high genetic similarity to humans — react to microgravity and low magnetic environments. About 75 percent of human disease genes exist in fruit flies. It makes them ideal for studying the biological impacts of space travel. For instance, how will humans fare on the moon or Mars, where gravity and magnetic forces differ dramatically from Earth’s?
In an exciting sneak peek into the future, Shenzhou-19’s crew will expose lunar soil bricks to the harsh elements of space. These soil bricks, replicas created from samples returned by the Chang’e-5 and 6 lunar missions. They will face space radiation and extreme temperature fluctuations. The ultimate goal? To someday build structures on the moon from locally sourced materials. A ‘village’ built on the moon from lunar soil.
The launch comes as China’s continues its preparations for manned lunar exploration. The fourth group of astronaut trainees began their rigorous training in August, with the group including specialists from the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions. To make their in-orbit lives more comfortable in the future, the team has even planned Cantonese-style space meals — a touch of home miles above Earth. China aims to have a an astronut walk on the moon by 2030, which would make them only the second country after the US to have set a human on the moon. Earlier this year China succsesfully returned lunar samples from the far-side of the moone using the unmaned spacecraft Chang’e-6.
Written by Yi Shen, additional reporting by China Daily and Xinhua.
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