A Long March 7 carrier rocket that will be used to transport the Tianzhou 5 cargo spaceship into orbit arrives at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province on Tuesday. (TU HAICHAO / FOR CHINA DAILY)
The third live class from China's space station was held Wednesday afternoon, delivered by Shenzhou-14 crew members Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe to students on Earth.
The main classroom is located at Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The class is also being attended by students from other three classrooms across China.
It is the first science lecture from the Wentian lab module. The previous two lectures of the "Tiangong Class" series were delivered by the Shenzhou-13 crew from the station's core module Tianhe.
We want to interest them by showing them interesting things and attract them to the exploration of science and the universe.
Chen Zheng, associate professor at Beijing Jiaotong University’s School of Science
The China Manned Space Agency said in a news release that the astronauts will carry out some experiments to show physical phenomena in the unique environment inside the space station, such as the capillary phenomenon, which is associated with surface tension and results in the elevation or depression of liquids in capillaries.
They will show the audience scientific apparatus inside the Wentian lab module that became part of the Tiangong station in July, and will also display the sampling procedures on rice and thale cress, a small flowering plant of the mustard family, that grow inside a scientific cabinet, the agency noted.
At the end of the lecture, the crew members will answer questions from students.
The astronauts will encourage viewers to conduct similar experiments on Earth to observe the disparities from those conducted in space, according to the agency.
Chen Zheng, an associate professor at Beijing Jiaotong University's School of Science who helped plan the Tiangong Class lectures, said the experiments performed by astronauts were carefully selected and are meant to interest young viewers, spark their curiosity and lead them to a passion for science and technology.
"We don't intend to use those experiments to inculcate knowledge about physics into students. Instead, we want to interest them by showing them interesting things and attract them to the exploration of science and the universe," he said.
The Shenzhou XIV mission crew has spent more than four months inside the Tiangong station and has carried out two spacewalks. They are to stay in the station until early December, when the Shenzhou XV crew will take over.
Their peers in the Shenzhou XIII mission, who stayed in orbit from mid-October 2021 to mid-April this year, carried out two lectures from inside Tiangong.
In another development, the Long March 7 carrier rocket that will be used to transport the Tianzhou 5 cargo spaceship to orbit to dock with the Tiangong station arrived at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province on Tuesday, according to the manned space agency.
The agency said that the rocket was carried by ship from Tianjin, a northern coastal municipality that is home to the rocket's manufacturing facility, to Wenchang. It will be assembled and then undergo ground tests with the Tianzhou 5 at the launch complex, it noted.
The Tianzhou 5 robotic spacecraft is scheduled to be sent to transport fuel and supplies to the Tiangong station before the end of this year. Its launch has been arranged after the launch of the Mengtian lab module late this month and before the Shenzhou XV manned mission around the end of this year.
With Xinhua inputs
