Officials announced that China will send its youngest crew of astronauts into space to the Tiangong space station on Thursday, aiming to bolster its knowledge of human spaceflight against the Americans and Russians.
A valuable experience for the Asian giant, which aims to send a Chinese man to the moon by 2030, the main goal of a space program that has been progressing steadily for several decades.
The trio of Shenzhou-17 missions is scheduled to lift off from the Jiuquan launch center in the Gobi Desert (northwest) at 11:14 a.m. (3:14 a.m. GMT) on Thursday.
These include commander Tang Hongbo (48 years old), his colleague Tang Shengjie (33 years old) and Jiang Xinlin (35 years old).
The average age of the crew is 38 years, compared to 42 years on the previous Shenzhou-16 mission.
“This is the crew of astronauts with the youngest average age” since China began manned space missions, the Chinese government said in a statement.
China has some catching up to do in this area, as it only sent its first human into space in 2003 – long after the Soviets and the Americans in 1961.
“In the past two years, I have often dreamed of returning to space,” veteran Tang Hongbo said at a news conference with his fellow astronauts on Wednesday.
“The space station is our other home, taking us away from Earth and into the universe,” added the man, who was part of the Shenzhou-12 mission in 2021.
The spacecraft must dock at the central module of the Tiangong station “around six and a half hours” after launch, said a spokesman for the Chinese space program, Lin Xiqiang.
Civilian in space
Tiangong, whose construction is now complete, has had its final T-shaped appearance for several months. In terms of size, it is similar to the former Russian-Soviet space station Mir, but is significantly smaller than the International Space Station (ISS).
Also known as CSS (for “Chinese Space Station” in English), it must remain in Earth orbit for at least 10 years.
Chinese astronauts will provide crew rotations, permanent occupation of Tiangong, maintenance and research work, and a slow expansion of the station’s capabilities.
In May, China sent its first civilian astronaut, Gui Haichao, a space science and engineering specialist, into space as part of an earlier mission.
He did not come from the Bundeswehr, as was systematically the case before.
China was pressured into building its own station in part by the United States’ refusal to allow it to participate in the ISS. An American law prohibits almost all cooperation between American and Chinese space agencies.
However, the Asian giant wants to pursue international cooperation around Tiangong, especially in conducting experiments.
China has already invested billions of euros in its space program.
In 2019, the country landed a plane on the far side of the moon, a world first. In 2020, it returned samples from the moon and completed Beidou, its satellite navigation system. And in 2021, China landed a small robot on Mars.