China is to send its first civilian astronaut into space as part of a crewed mission to the Tiangong space station today, as it pursues its ambitious plans for a crewed lunar landing by 2030.
The world’s second-largest economy has invested billions of US dollars in its military-run space program, trying to catch up with the US and Russia after years of belatedly matching their milestones.
All Chinese astronauts previously sent into space had been part of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
Photo: AP
Gui Haichao (桂海潮) is a professor at Beijing’s Beihang University, and would manage scientific experiments on the station during the mission, China Manned Space Agency deputy director Lin Xiqiang (林西強) told reporters yesterday.
His mission would “carry out large-scale, in-orbit experiments ... in the study of novel quantum phenomena, high-precision space time-frequency systems, the verification of general relativity and the origin of life,” Lin said.
“I’ve always had this dream,” Gui told a news conference yesterday.
His university said that he hailed from an “ordinary family” in the southwest province of Yunnan.
He had “first felt the attraction of aerospace” listening to the news of China’s first man in space, Yang Liwei (楊利偉), on campus radio in 2003, the university wrote on social media.
Gui’s addition is “particularly significant,” independent analyst Chen Lan said, adding that previous missions only carried astronauts trained as pilots responsible for more technical tasks and were not specialist scientists.
“It means that, from this mission on, China will open the door to space for ordinary people,” he said.
Gui is set to take off onboard the Shenzhou-16 spacecraft from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China today at 9:31am, the space agency said.
Space Commander Jing Haipeng (景海鵬) would lead the mission — on his fourth expedition into space, state media reported.
The third crew member would be engineer Zhu Yangzhu (主養豬).
Jing said he had not gone home for nearly four years due to fears that travel could disrupt his training.
“As astronauts going into space ... our main responsibility and mission is striving for glory for our country,” he said.
The three are to stay in Earth’s orbit for about five months.
Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), plans for China’s “space dream” have been put into overdrive.
China is planning to build a base on the moon, and Lin yesterday said that Beijing plans to land a crewed mission there by 2030.
“The overall goal is to achieve China’s first manned landing on the moon by 2030 and carry out lunar scientific exploration and related technological experiments,” he said.
The final module of the T-shaped Tiangong — whose name means “heavenly palace” — successfully docked with the core structure last year.
The station carries several pieces of cutting-edge scientific equipment, Xinhua news agency reported, including “the world’s first space-based cold atomic clock system.”
The Tiangong is expected to remain in low Earth orbit at 400km to 450km above the planet for at least 10 years.
It is constantly crewed by rotating teams of three astronauts.
While China does not plan to use Tiangong for global cooperation on the scale of the International Space Station, Beijing has said it is open to foreign collaboration.
China “is looking forward to and welcomes the participation of foreign astronauts in the country’s space station flight missions,” Lin said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS