The next team at China’s Tiangong orbital station will consist of the youngest astronaut in Chinese history to carry out a space mission, as well as four mice, officials announced Thursday. The Shenzhou-21 mission is scheduled to take off on Friday, October 31 at 4:44 p.m. French time, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, said Zhang Jingbo, spokesperson for the China Human Space Agency (CMSA).
The Tiangong space station, which has a team of three astronauts who rotate every six months, is the flagship of the Chinese space program. Engineer Wu Fei, only 32 years old, will become the youngest Chinese astronaut to undertake a space mission.
The team will be led by pilot Zhang Lu, 48, who participated in the Shenzhou-15 mission more than two years ago. Payload specialist Zhang Hongzhang, 39, completes the team for this mission. Four mice, two male and two female, will also be part of the trip, which will be the subjects of the first experiments carried out in orbit by China with rodents, Zhang Jingbo announced. Commander Zhang Lu said he was confident the team could “accomplish” the mission “successfully.”
On the Moon by 2030
The country’s space program, the only one along with those of the United States and Russia (and the former Soviet Union) that can autonomously send humans into space, has also landed probes on Mars and the Moon. China has considerably developed its space program over the past thirty years.
The Asian country placed a device on the far side of the Moon in 2019, a world first. In 2020, it brought back samples from the near side of the Moon and completed Beidou, its satellite navigation system. Beijing says it wants to send astronauts to the Moon by 2030, where it hopes to build a base.
On Thursday, the CMSA said it “firmly maintains” that goal and outlined a series of “crucial upcoming tests” in progress, including tests of its Lanyue lunar lander and its Mengzhou manned spacecraft. The Asian giant has injected billions of euros into its space program to catch up with the United States and Russia and realize what President Xi Jinping calls the “space dream” of the Chinese people.
Source: BFM TV
