There are three astronauts in the spaceship and one of them will go on a spacewalk for the first time
16: 25 Update
China's manned Shenzhou 7 spacecraft has reached Earth orbit. So far, about fifteen minutes after launch, everything is going well.
16: 11 Update
Three taikonauts or if you want Chinese astronauts, took off this evening at 21:10 local time (14:10 p.m. Israel time) from the Xiaokan Satellite Launch Center in the northwest of the Ginsau region. This is reported by the Chinese news agency Xinhua. In the first minute, the launch seemed completely normal.
The Shenzhou 7 mission is a historic mission in which three astronauts participate for the first time, and in which the first spacewalk will also take place. The launch is broadcast live on the CCTV television station, a Chinese government television station that broadcasts in the English language and its broadcasts are also received by satellites aimed at Israel, including Hotbird, as well as on the channels broadcast to Yes and Hot customers.
The flight commander is Jing Haifeng, and the other two, also like Jing, are pilots in the Chinese Air Force, Liu Boming and Zai Zifang, all 42. Zai will most likely be the one to step outside the Shenzhou 7 spacecraft for a few minutes. In the pre-broadcast on CCTV, one of the experts who participated in the discussion in the studio said that the possibility of launching three people without changing the structure of the spacecraft in which one person was on the first flight in 2003 and two on the second flight in 2005, is due to the fact that the mission this time is shorter and therefore the supplies can also be carried needed for three people.
The mission is expected to last five days and the two are expected to land on the plains of Inner Mongolia on September 28. This is the 66th consecutive launch of the Long March missile, a series that has proven to be the safest in the world.
