BEIJING: The Long March-5B Y4 carrier rocket, with the Mengtian lab module of China’s space station atop, was transferred to the launchpad at Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in south China’s Hainan Province on Tuesday, according to the China Manned Space Agency.
Mengtian, the last major part of China’s space station, is scheduled to be launched in the coming days to join the Tianhe core module and the Wentian lab module, forming a T-shaped complex by the end of this year.
In the next few days, various pre-launch functional checks and joint tests will be carried out as planned at the launch site. The whole transportation process took three hours and went smoothly after a rainy day in Wenchang. And all systems at the launch site are working well.
“The Long March-5B carrier rocket has undergone all procedures at the technical zone … All its parts are in very good condition,” said Su Lei, chief designer of the Long March-5B Rocket Control System at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALVT). Mengtian means “Dreams of Heaven.” The module weighs more than 20 tonnes.
It’s 17.9 meters long and has a maximum diameter of 4.2 meters. The lab module can be further subdivided into work, resource, payload and cargo airlock modules. Mengtian is mainly designed for scientific experiments. Unlike Tianhe and Wentian, it doesn’t have a sleeping cabin. Instead, it’s full of cabinets that can satisfy hundreds of experiments. The module will focus on microgravity scientific research.
–The Daily Mail-CGTN news exchange item
