The youngest crew of Chinese astronauts departed for China’s space station on Thursday, paving the way for a new generation of “taikonauts” to advance the country’s space ambitions in the future.
The Shenzhou-17, or “Divine Ship,” spacecraft and its three passengers took off atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China.
Leading the six-month mission was former Air Force pilot Tang Hongbo, 48, who was on the first manned mission to the space station in 2021.
Their return to the orbiting outpost Tiangong, or “Heavenly Palace” in Chinese, also set a new record for the shortest interval between two taikonaut spaceflight missions – coined from the Chinese word for space – suggesting a faster taikonaut rotation In the next years.
Tang, from China’s second batch of astronauts in 2010, had to wait more than a decade before being chosen for his maiden spaceflight in 2021.
On the other hand, their Shenzhou-17 crewmates Tang Shengjie, 33, and Jiang Xinlin, 35, both traveling to space for the first time, joined China’s third group of astronauts in September 2020.
China has already started the selection process for the fourth wave of astronauts, seeking candidates with doctorates in disciplines ranging from biology, physics and chemistry to biomedical engineering and astronomy.
It is also opening the process to candidates from Hong Kong and Macau for the first time.
The first and second batch of astronauts were all former Air Force pilots, like Tang, who joined the People’s Liberation Army in 1995 at the age of 20.
FOREIGN ASTRONAUTS
The selection and training process will begin soon for foreign astronauts who want to participate in joint flights to Tiangong, a senior official from China’s manned space program said this year.
But no matter how much China demonstrates its efforts to internationalize its space missions, its space program has distinct Chinese characteristics, at least in Tiangong.
Unlike the NASA-led International Space Station (ISS), where English is the working language, only Chinese is used on Tiangong, making knowledge of the Chinese language a key criterion for foreign participants.
Tiangong has become a symbol of China’s growing confidence in its space efforts after being excluded from the ISS program for decades. China is prohibited by US law from any collaboration, direct or indirect, with NASA.
Tiangong, completed in late 2022, can house a maximum of three astronauts at an orbital altitude of up to 450 km (280 miles) and will have an operational lifespan of more than 15 years.
The Shenzhou-17 astronauts will replace the Shenzhou-16 crew, which arrived in Tiangong at the end of May.
The Shenzhou-16 crew, consisting of veteran astronauts Jing Haipeng, Zhu Yangzhu and Gui Haichao, is scheduled to return to Earth on October 31.
Zhu and Gui, both in their 30s, are part of China’s third batch of astronauts.
Shenzhou-17 marks China’s 12th manned mission since Yang Liwei’s solo spaceflight in October 2003, the first Chinese citizen in space.