From Shenzhou 1 , to Shenzhou 13 , and then to Shenzhou 14, Chinese astronauts can leave the cabin. Even if you leave the cabin, you just do some simple and inconspicuous tasks, such as lifting the panoramic camera, installing protective covers on the cables, etc.
Some friends said that things like lifting panoramic cameras can be saved through technical means when designing space stations, such as adding a telescopic mechanism to the base of the panoramic camera outside the cabin, or making a device similar to a selfie stick. The cable protective cover can also be installed during the final assembly of the ground. There is no need to let the astronaut go out of the cabin to screw and install such a cover.
Shenzhou 14 astronauts leave the cabin
Why do you need to mobilize astronauts to leave the cabin to do such a simple job?
One word: practice.
space station is a brand new set of equipment for us, an extremely precise and complex space laboratory. Its design service life is more than 10 years. In the future, it may be like International Space Station , and the bigger the team is, the longer it is used, the longer it is used.
Space station is also a brand new space home for astronauts. In the future use process, they will inevitably leave the cabin for some maintenance, equipment replacement and repair work. It is currently in an initial and relatively simple state, which is convenient for astronauts to practice.
Shenzhou No. 7 Zhai Zhigang retrieves the equipment from outside the cabin
We punch a screw on the ground, pull a plug, and replace a light bulb. This is because we have adapted to the gravity environment of the earth. The friction generated by gravity brings many conveniences to us when doing movements - you don’t need to consider what impact the reaction force of pulling the plug will have on your body posture. But it is different in space. The space station as a whole, including the astronauts on the space station, are in a "weightless" environment. Even if you screw the screw, your body will rotate in the opposite direction due to reaction force. Therefore, astronauts need to always consider how to fix themselves before they can do the next action.
Astronauts operate
Outdoor space suit is like a small manned spacecraft. It is bulky and not very flexible. What difficulties will you encounter when wearing it and working in space? What optimizations and improvements are needed? How to cooperate between man and machine during space walk? Cooperation between astronauts? Cooperation between heaven and earth? What should I deal with when encountering an emergency? All these things are without textbooks and cannot be simulated on the ground, and foreigners are even more unlikely to teach you. You can only explore and summarize in practice by working out of the cabin multiple times.
Before flying into space, astronauts will conduct long and arduous training in a huge pool, trying to use the buoyancy of water to offset gravity and simulate the weightless state in space. However, pool training is still very different from the real space environment, so astronauts need to wear space suit , enter space to experience and explore, start with simple actions such as screws and installing plugs, and accumulate experience for themselves and subsequent astronaut training.
astronauts train on the ground
so Shenzhou 12 , thirteen, and fourteen, including the future Shenzhou 15 astronauts' out-of-cabin activities are a process from simple to complex and gradual. Its main purpose is to practice, and it also tests the reliability and safety of our out-of-cabin space suits and the entire out-of-cabin working system and process.
is expected to be in the late stage of Shenzhou 15, or Shenzhou 16 will enter the space station, and there will be a "big action" - cut solar windsurfing (just kidding). That is, the astronauts left the cabin and took off the two sun wings on the Tianhe core cabin with the cooperation of the robotic arm and moved it to the top of the experimental cabin.
In the future, the astronauts will reduce the number of outflows and try to leave the cabin as little as possible. If they can, they will not leave the cabin. After all, the lifespan of the space suit is calculated on time, and its reliability will decrease a little after every use, and it will eventually have to be replaced.It costs tens of millions of yuan to make an out-of-cabin space suit, and launching them to the sky is also a sky-high price.
Astronaut debugging space service outside the cabin
Of course, this does not affect the operation of the Tiangong Space Station. Our Mengtian Experimental Cabin specially designed a cargo airlock compartment. Astronauts only need to put the device in the airlock compartment and then use a small robotic arm to place it on the exposed platform outside the cabin. This greatly reduces labor intensity, reduces risks, and reduces costs. Get multiple goals in one go.
Shenzhou 14 is expected to have three spacewalk missions, and Shenzhou 15 may be more. But in two or three years, as the space station enters normal operation, astronauts' out-of-cabin missions will be reduced, and no exit will be allowed unless necessary. A crew may have only one chance to leave the cabin.
days and the core cabin solar windsurfing will be moved to the experimental cabin
This is not a regression, but a big progress.
#The God Fourteen Crew Group implements the second out-of-cabin event today#
