On October 17,2016 the Shenzhou-11 manned spaceship was sent into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in Gansu. Two days later the spaceship successfully connected with the space laboratory Tiangong-2. It meant China got closer to its plan of building a space station in 2020.
The spaceship took two Chinese astronauts to space this time. Jing Haipeng was an experienced astronaut who flew on Shenzhou-7 in 2008 and Shenzhou-9 in 2012. But it was Chen Dong's first space flight.
Jing and Chen were given a 30-day task on Tiangong-2. They tested new technology and did experiments to prepare for future space station tasks. The astronauts themselves were also the subject(对象) of those experiments. The life support devices(设备) they used and how they lived inside the space laboratory were studied. No Chinese astronaut had stayed in space for that long before.
A month-long space task was not easy, so Chinese scientists and engineers had come up with lots of new technologies to allow astronauts to stay more safely and more comfortably in space.
One of the new technologies tested during this task was a device called "space hospital". The space hospital was two little silver boxes tied around the two astronauts' legs. Through the "space hospital", scientists and doctors on the Earth could watch the astronauts' heart rate and temperature. When the astronauts felt tired, the "space hospital" could even massage(为……按摩) them.
After this task, China is expected to send an unmanned cargo spaceship(无人货运飞船) in mid-April next year. It will dock with Tiangong-2 and take new fuel to the space laboratory.
