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.
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