China has sent a three-person crew, including a civilian for the first time, to join its orbiting space station, as it pursues plans to send a crewed mission to the moon within 10 years.
The Shenzhou-16 spacecraft lifted off from
the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (JSLC) on the edge of the Gobi Desert in
northwestern China atop a Long March 2-F rocket just after 9:30am (01:30 GMT)
on Tuesday.
The crew, including China’s first civilian
astronaut Beihang University professor, Gui Haichao, will overlap briefly with
the three currently on board the Tiangong station, who will then return to
Earth after completing their six-month mission.
A third module was added to the station in
November, and space programme officials on Monday said they have plans to
expand it, along with launching a crewed mission to the moon before 2030.
China built its own space station after it
was excluded from the International Space Station, largely due to US concerns
over the Chinese space programmes’ intimate ties with the People’s Liberation
Army, the military branch of the ruling Communist Party.
China’s first crewed space mission in 2003
made it the third country after the former Soviet Union and the United States
to put a person into space under its own resources.
On this latest mission, payload expert Gui
Haichao, a professor at Beijing’s top aerospace research institute, will join
mission commander Major-General Jing Haipeng, who is making his fourth flight
to space, and spacecraft engineer Zhu Yangzhu.
The crew will stay on board the station for
about five months, during which they will conduct scientific experiments and
regular maintenance.
The mission comes against the background of a
rivalry with the US for reaching new milestones in space. That has been largely
friendly, but also reflects their sharpening competition for leadership and
influence in the technology, military and diplomatic fields.
US spending, supply chains and capabilities
are believed to give it a significant edge over China, at least for now. China
has broken out in some areas, however, bringing samples back from the lunar
surface for the first time in decades and landing a rover on the less explored
far side of the moon.
The US, meanwhile, aims to put astronauts
back on the lunar surface by the end of 2025 as part of a renewed commitment to
crewed missions, aided by private sector players such as SpaceX and Blue
Origin.
In addition to their lunar programmes, the
two countries have also separately landed rovers on Mars, and China plans to
follow the US in landing a spacecraft on an asteroid.
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