Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

China’s first crewed space mission in five years set for launch Thursday

By

China will send three astronauts into orbit on Thursday in what will be the country’s first crewed mission in five years.

Astronauts Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming, and Tang Hongbo will head to an under-construction space station on the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft, hitching a ride atop a Long March-2F rocket, state-affiliated Global Times reported.

A Long March-2F rocket.
The Long March-2F rocket will launch three Chinese astronauts to a new space station in the country’s first crewed launch in five years. STR/Getty Images

The launch is expected to take place at 9:22 a.m. local time (9:22 p.m ET on Wednesday) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center about 900 miles west of Beijing.

Recommended Videos

The astronauts will spend three months aboard the Tianhe module of the space station, the core module that reached Earth orbit in April. During their stay, the crew, two of whom have already been to space, will prepare for the arrival of additional modules.

Related

China is aiming to complete construction of the new space station by the end of next year and will use it to conduct science experiments in microgravity conditions — similar to how NASA uses the International Space Station (ISS). China’s station is orbiting Earth around 20 miles below the ISS, which is usually located about 250 miles above Earth.

China’s space station is likely to remain operational for at least 10 years, so it could outlast the aging ISS, which some have suggested may be taken out of service around 2030.

This week’s crewed voyage is the latest in a string of high-profile space missions by China as the country seeks to become a dominant player in the field of space exploration.

Recent launches overseen by the China National Space Administration have included a mission to Mars that recently put its first-ever rover onto the Martian surface. It also successfully completed a lunar mission toward the end of 2020 that brought moon rocks to Earth.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
SpaceX and Vast aim to be first to deploy a private space station
How Vast's space station will look in orbit.

VAST ANNOUNCES THE HAVEN-1 AND VAST-1 MISSIONS

As the International Space Station nears the end of its life, SpaceX and Los Angeles-based startup Vast have unveiled a plan to launch the first commercial space station.

Read more
Four space station astronauts just took Crew Dragon ‘for a spin’
SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft.

Four crewmembers at the International Space Station (ISS) enjoyed a short ride aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour on Saturday, moving the spacecraft to a different port to make way for a cargo ship arriving in June.

SpaceX Crew-6 members Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg of NASA, along with Sultan Alneyadi of the United Arab Emirates and Andrey Fedyaev of Russia, undocked from the Harmony module’s space-facing port at 7:23 a.m. before flying the short distance to the same module’s forward port.

Read more
SpaceX Starship rocket launches in first test flight, but explodes in midair
spacex starship launch explosion

SpaceX has launched its integrated Starship for the first time, with the spacecraft and rocket leaving the launchpad on a test flight. However, not everything went smoothly during the test, as the rocket exploded before the separation of the Starship spacecraft from the Super Heavy rocket booster.

The launch from SpaceX's Starbase facility at Boca Chica in Texas saw the Starship leave the launch pad at 9:33 a.m. ET, consisting of the integrated Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy Booster, which form the world's most powerful rocket. The combined Starship will be used for future missions to the moon and beyond, launched from a launch-and-catch tower standing at an impressive height of nearly 500 feet tall.

Read more