China's astronauts to broadcast science class from space station

Crew members of China's Shenzhou XIV mission will give their first open lecture on Wednesday afternoon, broadcasting from the orbiting Tiangong space station to students around the globe, according to China Manned Space Agency.

The agency said in a news release on Tuesday morning that the lecture will start at 3:45 pm Beijing time on Wednesday and will be livestreamed worldwide by China Media Group.

The astronauts — Senior Colonel Chen Dong, Senior Colonel Liu Yang and Senior Colonel Cai Xuzhe — 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.

The activity will be the third lecture of the Tiangong Class series, China's first extraterrestrial lecture series that aims to popularize space science, it said.

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.