China has launched a spacecraft carrying a brand new three-person crew for its orbiting house station
Chinese language astronauts for the Shenzhou-16 mission, from left, Gui Haichao, Zhu Yangzhu and Jing Haipeng wave as they attend a send-off ceremony forward of their manned house mission on the Jiuquan Satellite tv for pc Launch Heart in northwestern China, Tuesday, Could 30, 2023. (AP Photograph/Mark Schiefelbein)
The Related Press
BEIJING — China launched a brand new three-person crew for its orbiting house station on Tuesday, with an eye fixed to placing astronauts on the moon earlier than the tip of the last decade.
The Shenzhou 16 spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan launch heart on the sting of the Gobi Desert in northwestern China atop a Lengthy March 2-F rocket simply after 9:30 a.m. (0130 GMT) Tuesday.
The crew, together with China’s first civilian astronaut, will overlap briefly with three now aboard the Tiangong station, who will then return to Earth after finishing their six-month mission.
A 3rd module was added to the station in November, and house program officers on Monday mentioned they’ve plans to broaden it, together with launching a crewed mission to the moon earlier than 2030.
China constructed its personal house station after it was excluded from the Worldwide Area Station, largely as a consequence of U.S. issues over the Chinese language house applications’ intimate ties with the Folks’s Liberation Military, the navy department of the ruling Communist Celebration.
China’s first manned house mission in 2003 made it the third nation after the previous Soviet Union and the U.S. to place an individual into house beneath its personal sources.
On the this newest mission, payload skilled Gui Haichao, a professor at Beijing’s prime aerospace analysis institute, will be a part of mission commander Maj. Gen. Jing Haipeng, who’s making his fourth flight to house, and spacecraft engineer Zhu Yangzhu.