10 December 2022
"China plans to build the space station into a state-level space lab supporting long astronaut stays and large-scale scientific, technological, and application experiments," said Zhou Jianping, Chief Designer of China's manned space programme. With that the Tiangong space station will get busier exploring space science and technology in the following years, as the newly launched Shenzhou-15 mission wraps up the last stage of its construction and kicks off the first stage of its application and development.
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03 December 2022
Leonard David describes on his webportal "Inside Outer Space" the harsh and super-cold conditions of minus 25 degrees Celsius at the Gobi Desert landing site, the ground recovery teams for the SZ-14 mission will have to face on 4 December. A final all-system, comprehensive recovery drill for the SZ-14 mission was carried out in the night of 1 December at the Dongfeng landing site in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. A dozen search and rescue teams, 5 helicopters and more than 60 vehicles set out to their designated areas from the rendezvous point.
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07 December 2022
On 07 December the new VHF Data Exchange System (VDES) test satellite was launched on board a KZ-11 from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre. The satellite will be mainly used for communications test and key technologies verification of the VDES and the automatic identification system (AIS). It was the 23rd flight of a KZ-11.
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04 December 2022
SZ-14 completed all their tasks and handed over the space station operation to the SZ-15 crew in the evening of 2 December, completing the country's first in-orbit crew rotation. The spacecraft separated from the Tiangong space station on 4 December at 11:01 BJT. Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe, have lived and worked in the space station complex for 183 days. The return capsule of the SZ-14 spacecraft touched down at the Dongfeng landing site in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region at 20:09 BJT, concluding a highly successful mission.
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05 December 2022
The 3rd batch of space scientific experimental samples from the Tiangong space station arrived in Beijing on 05 December, following the return of the SZ-14 crew. The returned experimental samples include 3 cold packs of rice and Arabidopsis, and a bag with 4 boxes of container-free materials. They were delivered to the Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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02 December 2022
The meteorological satellites Fengyun-3E (FY-3E) and Fengyun-4B (FY-4B) along with their ground application systems, have officially started operation CMA confirmed on 01 December. Trial operation started in June, launch of FY-3E was in July 2021 and of FY-4B in June 2021.
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