There’s actually an open question on that. China’s Shenzhou spacecraft was heavily based on Soyuz. But there’s never been clear communication from the CNSA that the Shenzhou uses a standard Soyuz-style APAS docking system or if they modified it. It may not even be possible to dock Shenzhou to the ISS at all.
This lack of public information is pretty common unfortunately for those of us interested in spaceflight. It’s not sinophobic to state that the CNSA is incredibly tight-lipped on specifications. They’re very public with scientific research results relating to spaceflight, but almost never give the technical details on how they accomplish that research.
My bet is on NASA making a change to the Crew-9 flight in august, either to add physical seats or only send two astronauts up instead of the planned four. Adding new seats is theoretically possible as the Crew Dragon structure was originally designed to accommodate 7. But it may require modifications that might not be possible to complete before the flight. I think it more likely that NASA only sends up two astronauts. NASA doesn’t like emergency design changes.
I will eat my hat before Bill Nelson would request a Soyuz from Russia. That is going to be his absolute last resort. Nelson is going to be under extreme pressure from the White House to make NASA’s response a “made in the USA” solution.
There’s actually an open question on that. China’s Shenzhou spacecraft was heavily based on Soyuz. But there’s never been clear communication from the CNSA that the Shenzhou uses a standard Soyuz-style APAS docking system or if they modified it. It may not even be possible to dock Shenzhou to the ISS at all.
This lack of public information is pretty common unfortunately for those of us interested in spaceflight. It’s not sinophobic to state that the CNSA is incredibly tight-lipped on specifications. They’re very public with scientific research results relating to spaceflight, but almost never give the technical details on how they accomplish that research.
My bet is on NASA making a change to the Crew-9 flight in august, either to add physical seats or only send two astronauts up instead of the planned four. Adding new seats is theoretically possible as the Crew Dragon structure was originally designed to accommodate 7. But it may require modifications that might not be possible to complete before the flight. I think it more likely that NASA only sends up two astronauts. NASA doesn’t like emergency design changes.
I will eat my hat before Bill Nelson would request a Soyuz from Russia. That is going to be his absolute last resort. Nelson is going to be under extreme pressure from the White House to make NASA’s response a “made in the USA” solution.