As of 20:58 Beijing time on October 15, 2024, the crew of the "Shenzhou 18" manned mission composed of Ye Guangfu, Li Cong and Li Guangsu has been flying for 173 days, and the mission is in the final stage. It is expected that at the end of October, the "Shen 18" crew will usher in the "Shen 19" crew in orbit.
In the stage of crew rotation and return, the "Shenzhou-18" crew has carried out corresponding preparations in orbit, and rendezvous and docking operation training is one of them. The astronauts of the "Shen 18" crew used the teleoperation rendezvous and docking on-orbit training system to train themselves on rendezvous and docking operation skills such as image recognition, hand-controlled docking, and hand-controlled evacuation, and reviewed the hand-controlled rendezvous and docking operation.
In the mission stage of the Chinese space station, the hand-controlled rendezvous and docking operation and the automatic rendezvous and docking operation are backed up by each other, and the system settings prefer automatic rendezvous and docking, and can be switched to hand-controlled rendezvous and docking in case of failure. Similarly, automatic evacuation and manual evacuation are also backup to each other. When the "Shenzhou" manned spacecraft visits and evacuates the space station, if the automatic mode fails, it can switch to the manual control mode, and the astronauts in the spacecraft will manually operate the spacecraft to dock or evacuate.
If the cargo spacecraft is up and down, when the cargo spacecraft automatically docks or automatically withdraws from the mode fails, the space station astronauts can carry out manual control operation on the cargo spacecraft, because it is not driving the spacecraft in the spacecraft cabin, so it is called manual remote operation. Ye Guangfu, the commander of the Shenzhou-18 crew, was the first Chinese astronaut to carry out hand-controlled remote operation of a cargo spacecraft, and he carried out hand-controlled remote operation verification of the Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft during the Shenzhou-13 mission.
After the "Shenzhou 19" crew completes the on-orbit handover, the "Shenzhou 18" crew is expected to return to the ground in early November, when the crew will fly for more than 190 days.
Author: Mulan Xingzhou