(Jiuquan) China sent a new crew to its Tiangong space station on Thursday, as part of a program to send astronauts to the Moon by 2030, Chinese state media said.
The three astronauts of the Shenzhou-18 mission took off aboard a spacecraft, installed on a Long March-2F carrier rocket, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 8 p.m. 59 local time (8:59 a.m. Eastern).
Spectators applauded as the rocket took off into the night sky, according to an AFP journalist on the scene.
The launch is considered “a complete success,” state news agency Xinhua reported.
The crew is under the command of Ye Guangfu, a fighter pilot and astronaut who previously crewed the Shenzhou-13 spacecraft in 2021. The other two astronauts, Li Cong and Li Guangsu, are making their first trip to space.
They are expected to stay in the Tiangong (“Heavenly Palace”) station for six months, to conduct experiments in “the fields of fundamental microgravity physics, space materials science, space life sciences, space medicine and space technology,” said the China Human Spaceflight Agency (CMSA).
“Space Aquarium”
They will also try to create an aquarium on board and raise fish in microgravity, according to the Chine Nouvelle agency.
“Not only will taikonauts find pleasure in this ‘space aquarium,’ but it could pave the way for their counterparts in the future to benefit from nutritious fish from their own farms in orbit,” Xinhua said.
“They will also carry out experiments on fruit flies and mice,” said a researcher cited by the news agency.
Tiangong is the flagship project of the Chinese space program, which landed robotic rovers on Mars and the Moon and allowed China to become the third country to put human beings in orbit.
Tiangong, whose construction was completed in 2022, is expected to remain in low Earth orbit, between 400 and 450 kilometers above the planet, for at least 10 years. Teams of three astronauts take turns.
The new crew will replace that of the Shenzhou-17 mission, which was sent to the station in October.
President Xi Jinping has given China’s “space dream” a boost. The world’s second-largest economy has injected billions of dollars into its military space program in a bid to catch up with the United States and Russia.
Beijing aims to send a Chinese crew to the Moon by 2030 and plans to build a base on the lunar surface.
China has been excluded from the International Space Station since 2011, when the United States banned NASA from collaborating with Beijing. China then developed its own space station project.
reference: www.lapresse.ca