According to the latest news from the China Manned Space Engineering Office, on April 17, 2024, Beijing time, the Shenzhou-18 manned spacecraft and the Long March-2F Yao-18 carrier rocket combination have completed the vertical transfer work, and the equipment and facilities at the launch site are running well.
In 2024, China's space station will still be planned according to the original setting, with four launch missions planned, including two cargo spacecraft Tianzhou-7 and Tianzhou-8 and two manned spacecraft Shenzhou-18 and Shenzhou-19, and two manned spacecraft recovery missions of Shenzhou-17 and Shenzhou-18 as time progresses!
At this stage, the Tianzhou-7 cargo spacecraft has been launched into orbit, with several tons of sufficient supplies to the space station, and the upcoming launch mission of the Shenzhou-18 manned spacecraft, and the return of the Shenzhou-17 manned spacecraft will follow!
On October 26, 2023, the Shenzhou-17 manned spacecraft took three astronauts Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie and Jiang Xinlin to space and successfully settled in the Chinese space station.
The three astronauts of Shenzhou-17 went out of the spacecraft twice during their orbit and completed the first spacecraft extravehicular maintenance operation in the history of China's manned spaceflight. The space station has been in orbit for a long time, and it is sometimes difficult to observe the large amount of garbage and meteorite particles in space, and it is inevitable that it will be damaged by the impact.
According to the previous out-of-cabin inspection, the solar panels of the core module of the Chinese space station "Tianhe" were damaged, so the maintenance work was planned in the Shenzhou-17 mission, and the first attempt was perfect and the experience was accumulated.
Now the six-month space flight of Shenzhou 17 is coming to an end, and around April 26 is the day when the Shenzhou 17 crew will return to the ground. At present, China's space station has adopted the mode of in-orbit mission handover, so it is said that Shenzhou 18 will be launched around April 20, with three astronauts straight to space, six astronauts can come to a wave of space rendezvous!
According to past experience, the crew of the three astronauts of the Shenzhou-18 manned spacecraft will generally only meet with everyone publicly the day before the launch, and the candidates for the three astronauts have naturally already been decided. Many netizens will still be very curious, although the answer will be revealed in a few days, the composition of the three astronauts of Shenzhou 18 and the commander will be served by Shui?
In fact, according to the composition of the three astronauts of the Shenzhou 17 manned spacecraft, Tang Hongbo, as the first person to return to Tiangong, has carried out the Shenzhou 12 flight mission, and the other two astronauts are both flying missions for the first time, and they are members of the third batch of astronauts in China, and the three astronauts are very young.
So according to this law, the command of the Shenzhou 18 manned mission is likely to be selected from the crew of the Shenzhou 13 mission, and Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu from the second batch of astronauts are naturally the most likely!
Could it be that the first female commander of China's manned space flight will really appear in the Shenzhou 18 mission, in fact, everyone is very much looking forward to seeing such a situation, of course, we can also be sure that this situation will appear sooner or later, but not in the two manned missions of Shenzhou 18 and Shenzhou 19!
Previously, it was reported that the two crews of six astronauts had been determined that they would not appear in public until the eve of the launch, so according to this requirement, Wang Yaping and Liu Yang would not carry out the two manned missions of Shenzhou 18 and Shenzhou 19, because they had appeared many times to participate in various activities.
As Wang Yaping herself said, she hopes to become Chang'e, carry out a manned landing on the moon by 2030, and at the same time carry out a lunar version of the space class.
So from this point of view, the most likely candidate to become the commander of Shenzhou 18 is Ye Guang.
Of course, the Shenzhou 18 crew and the No. 02 and No. 03 astronauts cannot be completely determined, after all, they are likely to be the third batch of astronauts from China. There are a total of 18 astronauts in China's third batch, and only Zhu Yangzhu, Cabinet Haichao, Tang Shengjie and Jiang Xinlin have carried out flight missions, and the remaining 14 members have not appeared in the media so far!
Then the current situation is 2 out of 14, and there is a female astronaut among the remaining 14 astronauts, which means that there is a possibility of female astronauts in the Shenzhou 18 manned flight crew, it may be a space flight engineer, a payload expert, and of course, a space pilot!
It is worth looking forward to the fact that China's fourth batch of reserve astronauts has also been selected and will be included soon, including 12-14 astronauts, including astronauts from Hong Kong and Macao!
In 2030, China will carry out a manned landing on the moon as planned, and in the future, China's manned spaceflight will no longer only have low-Earth space station missions, Chinese astronauts will fly out for deep space exploration, manned landing on the moon or even manned landing, as long as there is a dream, everything is possible!
Text/Singularity Three minutes, the picture source is invaded and deleted on the Internet.