2023-10-26 14:25:00
On Thursday, October 26, China sent its youngest crew of astronauts into space for the Shenzhou-17 mission. The trio are to join China’s Tiangong space station and stay there for six months to strengthen the country’s knowledge of human spaceflight. Moon objective for 2030.
Since Xi Jinping came to power, thanks to staggering spending, the Middle Kingdom has been catching up in aeronautics at the speed of a rocket. China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003, one of its machines to the far side of the Moon in 2019, and a small robot to the surface of Mars in 2021. Finally, its Tiangong space station has been fully operational since end of 2022.
Smaller than the ISS, to which China was denied access by the United States, Tiangong must remain in Earth orbit for at least ten years. Today, its orbital base is equipped with cutting-edge scientific equipment.
It is she that the space travelers will have to join during their Shenzhou-17 mission. From the Jiuquan launch center in the Gobi Desert, Tang Hongbo (48 years old), Tang Shengjie (33 years old) and Jiang Xinlin (35 years old) took off aboard a Longue-Marche 2F rocket at 11 a.m. 14 local time (03:14 GMT). They were cheered by a crowd of spectators, as well as by space station employees, with patriotic songs, flags and yellow flowers.
This mission is crucial because China plans to set foot on the Moon by 2030.
Earlier this year, Russia, Japan and India sent their own spacecraft to the Moon. If the first two candidates failed, Indian space mission Chandrayaan-3 was a huge success: the first spacecraft to land on the South Pole of the Moon.
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