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神舟十四号载人飞船发射取得圆满成功

China successfully launched another manned mission to its new space station on Sunday, China’s Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced. The astronauts lifted off on the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft at 10:44 a.m. Beijing time.

The team will live and work at the Tiangong Space Station’s Tianhe core module for six months before returning to Earth in December. The crew includes Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe, who are expected to dock with the space station about 6.5 hours after launch. Chen, the mission commander, was aboard China’s Shenzhou-11 manned space mission in 2016 and previously held the record for longest stay in space by a Chinese astronaut. Liu, China’s first female astronaut, served as a crew member on the space mission Shenzhou-9. And this will be Cai’s first mission in space.

This is not the first crewed mission during the construction of the space station. The first crewed mission, a three-month stay by three other astronauts, was completed in September 2021. The second, Shenzhou-13, saw three astronauts spend six months in space for the first time, which helped prepare future astronauts to become accustomed to a long-term stay in space.

Six space missions have been scheduled before the end of the year, including another crewed mission, two laboratory modules and two cargo missions.

The team aboard Shenzhou-14 will continue construction work for six months, helping with the docking, setting up and testing of the two laboratory modules Wentian and Mengtian, which are set to launch in July and October. The modules will be assembled into a T-shaped structure, along with the Tianhe core cabin—the main living space for the astronauts—which will be expanded from 50 cubic meters to 110 cubic meters, the CMSA said. The astronauts will also conduct two to three spacewalks.

At the end of the Shenzhou-14 mission, another three astronauts are expected to rotate and live with the crew for 5 to 10 days, bringing the number of Chinese astronauts in space at the same time to a record six.