Final preparations begun for Shenzhou-13 Crew mission to return to Earth

Taikonauts aboard the China's historic Shenzhou-13 mission are nearing the completion of their record-breaking six-month-long stay in the space station, and will next week start their final preparations ahead of their expected return to Earth in April 2022.

March 25, 2022, BEIJING: Three Chinese Astronauts (taikonauts) of Shenzhou 13, aboard the Tiangong Space Station in Low Earth Orbit; Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu, have successfully completed two extravehicular activities, livestreamed two popular-science lectures and hosted the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Tiangong Dialogue, as well as carried out more than 20 scientific experiments based on the previous Shenzhou-12 mission, since the crew began their mission to the country's space station on Oct. 16, 2021.

Before leaving the Station, there are a lot of things that need to be sorted out; The crew of "Shenzhou 14" will come up more than a month after the "Shenzhou 13" crew's return, so products and equipment should be put in place in advance "including those packages and products on Tianzhou-2 and Tianzhou-3 cargo spaceship". Another important thing is about the spacecraft's descent module to be loaded with the important samples to be brought back from space.

Science from Shenzhou 13

The Shenzhou 13 mission completes more than 20 (on-orbit) scientific experiments on the basis of the Shenzhou 12. On the one hand, these experiments revolved around new technologies for astronaut health monitoring, on the other hand, new scientific knowledge and new discoveries, and on the other hand, data accumulation, and completed a series of innovative researches

Cardiomyocytes 'calcium flickering' in weightlessness observed for the first time

Astronauts have completed the world's first case of renal epithelial cells from human urine, and transformed them into cardiomyocytes through gene reprogramming.

This is also the first time in the world to see the shrinking process of