China launches its youngest-ever astronauts into space
Three new astronauts are heading to China’s Tiangong space station, which is about to get even bigger in the coming years.
China sent its youngest-ever crew of astronauts to its Tiāngōng 天宫 (“Heavenly Palace”) space station today.
The Shenzhou-17 mission successfully launched at 11:14 a.m. local time from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) reported (in Chinese). It is the 30th flight mission and the 12th manned mission of China’s manned space program.
The Chinese astronauts on board include Tāng Hóngbō 汤洪波 (born in 1975), Táng Shèngjié 唐胜杰 (born in 1989), and Jiāng Xīnlín 江新林 (born in 1988). They will replace the current crew that has been on the station for six months and conduct experiments in space medicine, space technology, and other areas, as well as help install and maintain the equipment inside and outside the station.
The new astronauts show that China is expanding its corps of individuals capable of manning its space station, Kevin Pollpeter, a senior research fellow at the national security research nonprofit CNA, told The China Project.
“It’s important to remember that China to date has only sent 20 different people into space…over a 23-year period,” Pollpeter said. “As the astronauts get younger, the astronauts who have been in space have now been able to train and pass on their experiences to a younger cohort.”
The U.S. has launched hundreds of astronauts since the first Americans went to space in 1961, said Pollpeter.
Lín Xīqiáng 林西强, deputy director of the CMSA, also confirmed previously announced plans to expand the Tiangong station “at an appropriate time” with the addition of a new module.
“We extend an invitation to the world and welcome all countries and regions committed to the peaceful use of outer space to cooperate with us to participate in the China Space Station missions,” Lin said per Chinese state broadcaster CGTN.
The announcement comes one day after the CMSA said (in Chinese) it would send a new telescope to probe the deep universe during a press conference to debut the Shenzhou-17 mission.
The telescope, dubbed Xúntiān 巡天, or “survey the heavens,” will be installed alongside the Tiangong space station and will co-orbit with it. It is expected to make breakthroughs in cosmology, dark matter and dark energy, the Milky Way galaxy and other neighboring galaxies, star formation and evolution, and exoplanets.
The Xuntian is seen as a new-and-improved competitor to the U.S.’s Hubble Space Telescope, with roughly the same spatial resolution as the Hubble, but with a field of view more than 300 times larger, Lin said in August.
A bigger space station
On October 5, the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), a unit of China’s main space contractor, announced plans to double the size of its space station to six modules from the current three in the coming years. He added that the operational lifetime of Tiangong will exceed 15 years, more than the 10 years previously announced.
The Tiangong is currently about a quarter of the size of the U.S.’s NASA-run International Space Station (ISS). But the ISS is slated to retire in 2030 — the same year that China has stated that it expects to become “a major space power” — and the expansion plans for the Tiangong comes as it could likely be the only one left in orbit when the time comes.
China’s open invitation to explore the Moon
On October 23, Belarus announced that it will join China’s International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) program, the third country after Pakistan and Azerbaijan to sign up this month. There are now seven nations in the ILRS coalition: China, Russia, Belarus, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Venezuela, and South Africa.
“This is a clear indicator that China’s efforts to promote ILRS as an international cooperation endeavor [are] gaining some footing,” Ian Christensen, a director at the space race watchdog organization the Secure World Foundation, told The China Project.
There has been less mention recently of Russia’s role in announcements related to the ILRS, Christensen added. “[It’s] possible that China may [be] increasing efforts to add other participants in order to maintain the program as an international one, given potential changes in Russia’s role,” he said.
“I think this is another sign that the geostrategic competition that we are seeing here on Earth is being extended into space,” said Pollpeter. “I can’t help but think that this is another sign that China’s wanting to compete with the U.S. in regards to lunar exploration.”
Apart from China and Russia, the countries that have signed on to the ILRS coalition have relatively little space experience and may offer limited value to the efforts, he added.
The ILRS, jointly founded by China and Russia in 2021, plans to set up a permanently inhabited base on the Moon’s south pole by 2030. It is widely seen as a rival to the U.S.-led Artemis program, which is building a Moon coalition of its own through a set of agreements known as the Artemis Accords. Currently, 29 nations have signed the Artemis Accords to date: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea, and the U.K.
Earlier this month, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) opened up its upcoming Chang’e-8 Moon mission, an unmanned lunar expedition slated to launch in 2028, to global cooperation on spacecraft launches and exploration of the Moon.
