ෂෙන්ජෝ -18 රොකට්ටුවේ මාළුත් ගිහිං!

Zebrafish enter orbit on China Space station

China's latest Shenzhou-18 crew of three astronauts have successfully entered the country's space station and met with another astronaut trio in space in the early hours of April 24, starting a new round of in-orbit crew handover.

The Shenzhou-18 spaceship, atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket, lifted off at around 21:00 (Beijing Time) on April 23 from the launch site in northwest China, sending three astronauts to the orbiting Tiangong space station for a six-month mission.

About 10 minutes after the lift-off, the Shenzhou-18 spaceship separated from the rocket and entered its designated orbit. The crew members are in good shape and the launch is a "complete success," the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced.

The Shenzhou-17 astronauts aboard the space station watched the live coverage of the entire launch process.

Then the two trios of astronauts posed for group photos and chanted the slogan: "Build a dream at the Tiangong Space Station and continue to work hard. China's space station is always worth looking forward to!"

The space get-together of the two crews kicked off the fourth in-orbit crew rotation in China's space station.

According to the CMSA, the six astronauts will live and work together for about five days to complete planned tasks and handover work.

In addition to the astronauts, 04 zebrafish was also brought into orbit by the Shenzhou-18 spaceflight mission.

The fish are said to be in stable condition as of April 25 after being transferred to a lab module aboard the China Space Station.

The experiment is the country's in-orbit aquatic ecological research project, performed in cooperation with the Institute of Hydrobiology and the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Using zebrafish and goldfish algae to establish a self-cycling aquatic ecosystem in orbit, the project aims to make a breakthrough in the cultivation of vertebrates in space.

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