A Long March-2F rocket carrying the unmanned Shenzhou-22 spacecraft takes off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center for a mission to China’s Tiangong space station, near Jiuquan, Gansu province, China on November 25, 2025. Photo: China Daily via Reuters

Jiuquan:

China’s only woman spaceflight engineer will be among a fresh crew of three astronauts sent to its Tiangong space station this week, Beijing announced Tuesday. The Shenzhou-19 mission is scheduled to blast off with its trio of space explorers at 4:27 am Wednesday (2027 GMT Tuesday) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said.

Among the crew is Wang Haoze, who according to the space agency is currently China’s only female spaceflight engineer. She will become the third Chinese woman to take part in a crewed mission.

Headed by Cai Xuzhe, the team will carry out their mission before returning to Earth in “late April or early May next year”, CMSA Deputy Director Lin Xiqiang said at a Tuesday press conference confirming the launch.

Cai, a 48-year-old former air force pilot, brings experience from a previous stint aboard Tiangong as part of the Shenzhou-14 mission in 2022.

Completing the astronaut lineup is Song Lingdong, Lin announced.

The crew currently aboard the Tiangong space station is scheduled to return to Earth on November 4 after completing handover procedures with the incoming astronauts, Lin said.

China’s space programme, the third to put humans in orbit, has also landed robotic rovers on Mars and the Moon.

The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are exchanged every six months — is the crown jewel of the country’s space programme.

China has ramped up plans to achieve its “space dream” under President Xi Jinping.

Beijing says it aims to send a crewed mission to the Moon by 2030, where it intends to construct a base on the lunar surface.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, an image captured off a screen at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China shows the Shenzhou-15 and Shenzhou-14 crew taking a group picture with their thumbs up after a historic gathering in space on Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2022.
| Photo Credit: AP

China plans to expand its space station to six modules from three in coming years, offering astronauts from other nations an alternative platform for near-Earth missions as the NASA-led International Space Station (ISS) nears the end of its lifespan.

The operational lifetime of the Chinese space station will be more than 15 years, the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), a unit of China’s main space contractor, said at the 74th International Astronautical Congress in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Wednesday.

That would be more than the 10 years previously announced.

China’s self-built space station, also known as Tiangong, or Celestial Palace in Chinese, has been fully operational since late 2022, hosting a maximum of three astronauts at an orbital altitude of up to 450 km (280 miles).

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At 180 metric tons after its expansion to six modules, Tiangong is still just 40% of the mass of the ISS, which can hold a crew of seven astronauts. But the ISS, in orbit for more than two decades, is expected to be decommissioned after 2030, about the same time China has said it expects to become “a major space power”.

Chinese state media said last year as Tiangong became fully operational that China would be no “slouch” as the ISS headed toward retirement, adding that “several countries” had asked to send their astronauts to the Chinese station.

But in a blow to China’s aspirations for space diplomacy, the European Space Agency (ESA) said this year it did not have the budgetary or “political” green light to participate in Tiangong, shelving a years-long plan for a visit by European astronauts.

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“Giving up cooperation with China in the manned space domain is clearly short-sighted, which reveals that the U.S.-led camp confrontation has led to a new space race,” the Global Times, a nationalist Chinese tabloid, wrote at the time.

Tiangong has become an emblem of China’s growing clout and confidence in its space endeavours, and a challenger to the United States in the domain after being isolated from the ISS. It is banned by U.S. law from any collaboration, direct or indirect, with NASA.

Russia, a participant in the ISS, has similar space diplomacy plans, suggesting that Moscow’s partners in the BRICS group – Brazil, India, China and South Africa – could construct a module for its space station.

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said last year it was planning to build a space station comprising six modules that could accommodate up to four cosmonauts.