JIUQUAN, China (AP) — China declared it a “resounding success” after launching a new three-person crew to its orbiting space station early Wednesday, as the country seeks to expand its space exploration with missions to the moon and beyond. there.
The Shenzhou-19 spacecraft carrying the trio lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 4:27 a.m. on a Long March-2F rocket, the backbone of space missions. manned from China.
“The condition of the crew is good and the launch has been successful,” state broadcaster China Central Television announced.
China built its own space station after being excluded from the International Space Station, mainly due to United States concerns about the total control that the People’s Liberation Army, the military arm of the Chinese Communist Party, exercised over the space program. The Chinese lunar program is part of a growing rivalry with the United States and other powers, including Japan and India.
The team of two men and one woman will replace the astronauts who have lived on the Tiangong space station for the past six months. They are expected to remain there until April or May next year.
The new mission commander, Cai Xuzhe, traveled to space on the Shenzhou-14 mission in 2022, while the other two, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze, born in the 1990s, are traveling to space for the first time.
Song was an air force pilot, and Wang was an engineer at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. Wang will be the crew’s payload specialist and the third Chinese woman aboard a manned mission.
In addition to putting a space station into orbit, the Chinese space agency has sent a rover to Mars. Their goal is to put a person on the Moon by 2030, which would make China the second nation to do so. The United States was the first. It also plans to build a lunar research station and has been the first country to transfer rock and soil samples from the dark side of the Moon.
The United States continues to lead space exploration and plans to send astronauts to the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years, although NASA delayed its planned date to 2026.
The new crew will conduct spacewalks and install new equipment to protect the station from space debris.
China launched its first manned mission in 2003, becoming the third nation to do so after the former Soviet Union and the United States. The space program is a source of enormous national pride and a testament to China’s technological advances over the past two decades.
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.
