BEIJING (AP) — China launched a new three-person mission on June 5 to complete the assembly of its permanently orbiting space station.
The Shenzhou 14 crew will stay at Tiangong Station for six months, during which time they will oversee the addition of two laboratory modules to join the main Tianhe living space for the April 2021 launch.
At 10:44 a.m., their spacecraft blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert on a Long March 2F rocket, the mainstay of the manned space program.
Fifteen minutes later, it reached low-Earth orbit and turned on its solar panels, earning applause from ground controllers in Jiuquan and Beijing.
The launch, which was broadcast live on state television, showed growing confidence in the capabilities of the space program, which was touted as a sign of China’s technological advancement and global influence.
Commander Chen Dong and astronauts Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe will assemble the three-module structure connecting the existing Tianhe with Wentian and Mengtian, and are expected to arrive in July and October. Another cargo spacecraft, Tianzhou-3, is still docked at the station.
The arrival of the new module will “provide a more stable, more powerful, more complete device,” Chen, 43, who was a member of the Shenzhou 11 mission in 2016, told a news conference.
Liu, 43, is also an aerospace veteran and was China’s first female astronaut to fly into space on the Shenzhou 9 mission in 2012. Cai, 46, is on his first space trip.
China’s space program launched its first astronaut into orbit in 2003, becoming the third country after the former Soviet Union and the United States to independently complete an astronaut into orbit
It has landed robotic rovers on the moon and placed one on Mars last year. China also returned lunar samples, and officials discussed a possible crewed mission to the moon.
China’s space program is run by the People’s Liberation Army, the military arm of the ruling Communist Party, prompting the United States to exclude it from the International Space Station.
The crew of the upcoming Shenzhou 15 will join Chen, Liu and Cai for three or five days after the mission, the first time the station is carrying six people.
