China launched its next crew to the Tiangong space station on Sunday (May 24), on a mission that will relieve astronauts who have been in orbit a month longer than planned, and send one astronaut on China’s first year-long spaceflight.
A 203-foot-long (62 meters) Long March 2F rocket launched the Shenzhou 23 mission on Sunday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 11:08 a.m. EDT (1508 GMT; 11:08 p.m. local time at Jiuqan).
Shenzhou 23 is sending the next trio of astronauts to Tiangong to begin a six-month-long stay aboard the space station. That trio consists of Zhu Yangzhu (the mission’s commander), Zhang Zhiyuan and Lai Ka-ying. Lai is the first astronaut from Hong Kong to reach space.
The launch also marked the start of a historic human spaceflight for China: One of the three astronauts is starting a one-year stay in orbit, a first for the country. This is because Shenzhou 24, due to launch late this year, will be used to send a Pakistani astronaut to Tiangong for a short-duration visit.
This first international visitor to Tiangong will arrive on Shenzhou 24 but then take the seat of one of the Shenzhou 23 astronauts days later when the spacecraft returns to Earth, leaving one Shenzhou 23 astronaut to complete a year in orbit. (Chinese space officials have not yet said which astronaut will fly this extra-long mission.)
The launch of Shenzhou 23 also heralds the end of what has become China’s longest human spaceflight mission to date — the emergency-impacted Shenzhou 21.
The new crew will take control of Tiangong from the Shenzhou 21 astronauts, who saw their Shenzhou 20 colleagues use their Shenzhou 21 spacecraft to get home after a suspected debris impact damaged the Shenzhou 20 vehicle. The uncrewed Shenzhou 22 was later sent to Tiangong to provide a lifeboat for the Shenzhou 21 astronauts — Zhang Lu, Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang — and is now scheduled to carry them back to Earth on May 29.
Shenzhou 23 is the 11th crewed mission to fly to Tiangong. The first such flight took place in June 2021, when Shenzhou 12 visited the station’s Tianhe core module; two further crewed missions aided assembly of the three-module facility, which was complete by late 2022. Shenzhou 22 was launched uncrewed in an emergency response to provide a lifeboat.
The Shenzhou 23 mission follows shortly after the launch of the Tianzhou 10 cargo spacecraft, which arrived at Tiangong on May 11, delivering nearly seven tons of supplies.
<em>Editor’s note: This story was updated at noon ET on May 23 with the launch date and time and the identities of the three Shenzhou 23 astronauts. It was updated again at 1 p.m. ET on May 24 with news of launch success.