#tiangong-space-station

#tiangong-space-station

My first thought was whether a small leaf had somehow stuck to the outside of the window. But then I quickly realized that couldn't happen because we were in space. How could there possibly be a fallen leaf there? We could see very clearly the small cracks [with the microscope]. Several were relatively long, and one was shorter. We could also see that some of the cracks had penetrated through.

BEIJING China launched the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft on Tuesday to help bring back a team of astronauts after a damaged spacecraft left them temporarily stranded on China's space station. The Shenzhou 22, which successfully docked at the Tiangong space station Tuesday, will be used sometime in 2026 by the three astronauts who arrived on Nov. 1. Earlier this month, another group of Chinese astronauts from the Shenzhou 20 mission faced a nine-day delay in their return to Earth after their craft's window was damaged.

China's Shenzhou-21 spaceship launched Friday, carrying its youngest astronaut and small mammals to the country's orbiting space station. The Tiangong space station, crewed by rotating teams of three astronauts, is the centerpiece of China's multibillion-dollar space program. Beijing aims to send astronauts to the moon by the decade's end and eventually build a lunar base, in a bid to rival the US and Russian space programs.