China launches manned spacecraft to Tiangong space station
Three Chinese cosmonauts went to the Tiangong orbital station under construction in China on the Shenzhou-13 spacecraft with the Changzheng-2F launch vehicle, RIA Novosti reports.
The launch took place at the Jiuquan Cosmodrome in the northwest of the country.
Into orbit went Zhai Zhigang, who in 2008 became the first Chinese to complete a spacewalk, female astronaut Wang Yaping, who was a member of the Shenzhou 10 mission in 2013, and rookie astronaut Ye Guangfu.
The crew will spend at least 180 days at the station.
We will remind, earlier in NASA said that the United States is in a state of space race with China. The head of the organization, Bill Nelson, noted that Washington and Beijing are unlikely to be able to establish cooperation in this area, since China is a closed country.
It also became known that Channel One will broadcast live the landing of the Russian Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft with a movie crew, scheduled for the morning of October 17.
