China hopes to strengthen its knowledge of manned flight against the Americans and Russians. To do this, the Middle Kingdom must send its youngest crew of astronauts into space on Thursday to its Tiangong space station, officials announced. A valuable experience for the Asian giant, which aims to send a Chinese to the Moon by 2030, the major objective of a space program which has been progressing steadily for several decades.
The trio of the Shenzhou-17 mission is scheduled to take off Thursday at 11:14 a.m. (5:14 a.m. French time) from the Jiuquan launch center, in the Gobi desert (northwest). It includes Commander Tang Hongbo (48 years old), his colleague Tang Shengjie (33 years old) as well as Jiang Xinlin (35 years old). The average age of the crew is 38 years old, compared to 42 years old during the previous Shenzhou-16 mission.
China wants to catch up
“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, because it only sent its first human into space in 2003 – a long time after the Soviets and the Americans in 1961.
Tiangong Station
“In the past two years, I have often dreamed of returning to space,” veteran Tang Hongbo said at a press conference Wednesday with his fellow astronauts. “The space station is our other home that takes us away from Earth and takes us into the universe,” added the man who was part of the Shenzhou-12 mission in 2021.
The spacecraft must dock with the central module of the Tiangong station “around six and a half hours” after takeoff, said a spokesperson for the Chinese space program, Lin Xiqiang. Tiangong, whose construction is now complete, has had its final T-shaped appearance for several months. Similar in size to the former Russian-Soviet station Mir, it is however much 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 provide crew rotations, permanent occupation of Tiangong, maintenance and research work, as well as a slow expansion of the station’s capabilities. In May, China sent its first civilian astronaut, Gui Haichao, a specialist in space science and engineering, into space as part of a previous mission.
Beijing persona non grata to the ISS
China was partly pushed to build its own station by the United States’ refusal to allow it to participate in the ISS. An American law prohibits almost any collaboration between American and Chinese space authorities. The Asian giant, however, wishes to carry out international cooperation around Tiangong, particularly for carrying out experiments.
China has already invested billions of euros in its space program. In 2019, the country landed a machine on the far side of the Moon, a world first. In 2020, it brought back samples from the Moon and finalized Beidou, its satellite navigation system. And in 2021, China landed a small robot on Mars.