China's new crew docks at space station, boosts influence in orbit

A Chinese spaceship carrying a three-person crew has docked with its orbiting space station as the country seeks to expand its exploration of outer space in competition with the United States, even as it looks for cooperation from other nations.

The team of two men and one woman will replace the astronauts who have lived on the Tiangong space station for the last six months, conducting a variety of experiments and maintaining the structure.

They are expected to stay until April or May of next year. The new mission commander, Cai Xuzhe, went to space in the Shenzhou-14 mission in 2022, while the other two, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze, are first-time space travellers.

Song and Wang were born in the 1990s and are graduates of the third wave of Chinese astronaut recruitment, having undergone a rigorous testing and training process taking years.

Early Wednesday morning, China declared the launch and entry into outer space a “complete success.”

The Shenzhou-19 spaceship carrying the trio blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 4:27 am local time atop a Long March-2F rocket, the backbone of China’s crewed space missions.

“The crew condition is good and the launch has been successful,” the state broadcaster China Central Television announced.

A research station

China built its own space station after being excluded from the International Space Station, mainly because of US concerns over the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese Communist Party’s military arm’s overall control over the space program. China’s moon program is part of a growing rivalry with the US and others, including Japan and India.

Besides putting a space station into orbit, the Chinese space agency has landed an explorer on Mars. It aims to put a person on the moon before 2030, which would make China the second nation after the United States to do so.

It also plans to build a research station on the moon and has already transferred rock and soil samples from the moon in a first for any nation in decades, and placed a rover on the little-explored far side of the moon in a global first.

The new Chinese crew will perform spacewalks and install new equipment to protect the station from space debris.

China’s space authorities say they have measures in place in case their astronauts have to return to Earth earlier.

China launched its first crewed mission in 2003, becoming only the third nation to do so after the former Soviet Union and the United States.

The space program is a source of enormous national pride and a hallmark of China’s technological advances over the past two decades.