China has sent a non-military human into space for the first time. Together with two colleagues, he is to carry out scientific experiments on the Chinese space station.
Countdown, ignition, up in the space capsule, the three astronauts salute the on-board camera. Then the flames shoot out of the engines of the Chinese “Long March 2F” rocket and send the crew on their way towards space.
Onlookers on the ground are waving Chinese flags, and Chinese state television is showing the Shenzhou 16 mission’s apparently successful start. This has a crew member who, for the first time, does not belong to the military: the 36-year-old so-called payload specialist Gui Haichao.
Launch of the carrier rocket of the type “Long March 2F”
“I am mainly responsible for our mission’s equipment, that it works and is in good condition. But I will also conduct experiments, try new tools, collect and analyze data,” Gui said at a press conference before departure.
When he’s not flying into space, Gui is a professor at Beijing Aerospace University. His university describes him as the scion of a “traditional family” from a province in the west of the country. He himself says he didn’t hesitate for a second when China dropped the rule in 2018 that all astronauts must also be military personnel.
Space station has been operational since the beginning of the year
The three astronauts were said goodbye to the Jiuquan space center in the north-west of the country on the morning of the start with a ceremony that included brass band music and cheers. On their mission, they are to replace the previous crew of the Chinese space station Tiangong.
The station has been fully operational since the beginning of the year. It currently has a quarter of the mass of the International Space Station. Concrete plans to expand Tiangong already exist. China has been banned from using the ISS, primarily at the insistence of the United States.
But China’s space program should grow, that’s what the communist leadership wants. On state television, its boss Zhou Jianping recently pointed out that more staff would be needed: “With the functioning space station, the number of manned flights has also increased. We need more astronauts – at least six a year – to carry out these missions. Who from the All coming back needs to recover first, so our astronaut team needs to grow.”
program is subject to communist Political party
Even if a civilian has now nominally flown into space – space travel is and will remain a matter for the military in China. Both the space program and the People’s Liberation Army are subordinate to the Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping. He wants China to catch up with leading space nations like the USA and Russia as quickly as possible.
On Monday, the national space agency announced that it wanted to start a manned Chinese moon mission by 2030 at the latest.
The next mission to the Tiangong space station is scheduled to start next November. It is not known whether a crew member who is not a member of the military will be allowed to fly again.