From Le Figaro with AFP
Published 3 hours ago, now updated
The three astronauts of the Shenzhou-17 mission greet the crowd before launch. CHINA DAILY / Portal
China sent its youngest crew of astronauts into space to the Tiangong Space Station on Thursday, October 26, with the aim of strengthening its knowledge of human spaceflight. The trio of the Shenzhou-17 mission launched at 11:14 a.m. local time (03:14 GMT) aboard a Longue-Marche 2F rocket from the Jiuquan launch center in the Gobi Desert (northwest), according to the state. Television CCTV.
The crew includes commander Tang Hongbo, who was born in October 1975 and is around forty years old, his colleague Tang Shengjie (33 years old) and Jiang Xinlin (35 years old). The average age on board is 38 years, compared to 42 years on the previous Shenzhou-16 mission.
Lunar target by 2030
The spacecraft must dock at the central module of the Tiangong (“Heavenly Palace”) station “about six and a half hours” after launch, a spokesman for the Chinese space program, Lin Xiqiang, said on Wednesday. Your stay on Tiangong is expected to last six months.
This experience is valuable 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.
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