GUWAHATI: China said it is ready to launch its next crew to the Tiangong space station early Wednesday, another step in the country's pursuit of becoming a major space power. The crew consists of two men and one woman and will replace the astronauts who have been aboard the station for the past six months.
Cai Xuzhe, who flew to space last year, will lead the crew. Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze are the other two crew members who have never flown to space before. Song is a pilot with the air force, while Wang, an engineer working with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, is a payload specialist. This is also Wang's third journey into space, making her the third Chinese woman.
On Tuesday, the three astronauts appeared briefly to the media and declared that they were ready to go back to work on scientific research at the station and that they wanted to return with pride for their country.
China is expected to launch a crewed space mission to send three astronauts to an orbiting space station and conduct experiments. The launch is planned for 4:27 a.m. Wednesday at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. The Shenzhou-19 spacecraft, carrying the crew, will be launched into space by a Long March-2F rocket, a key part of China's crewed space missions.
After being shut out of the International Space Station due to U.S. concerns about the People's Liberation Army, the military wing of the Chinese Communist Party, China went on to build its space station. China has successfully landed a rover on Mars, and it plans to send a person to the moon by 2030, which will make it the second country to send a human being to the moon, after the United States. It also plans to establish a research station on the moon.
This lunar program finds its place in a competition context with the U.S. still being a world leader in space exploration besides Japan and India. This move by the U.S. is to send back astronauts to the moon, an activity that has been done for over 50 years, and NASA recently pushed its target date to 2026.
During the next mission, an uncrewed spacecraft will bring more supplies to the space station. The astronauts will go out on spacewalks and clean equipment to rid Tiangong of all the space junk, most of which China has produced. The mission is to be completed by late April or early May. According to Lin, there is an agreement that astronauts can be brought back early if required.
China sent its first crewed mission in 2003, making it the third country to do so, after the former Soviet Union and the United States. The space program has, over the last two decades, been a huge national pride and a testimony of technological advancement.
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