On Tuesday, authorities have announced, China will launch its first civilian astronaut as part of a crewed trip to the Tiangong space station. The China Manned Space Agency said on Monday that payload specialist Gui Haichao will launch from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China on Tuesday at 9:31am local time (01:31 GMT). All Chinese space travelers up to this point have been PRC military personnel. Gui, a professor at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, would “mainly be responsible for the on-orbit operation of space science experimental payloads,” according to a statement sent by the space agency to the media.
State media reports that Jing Haipeng, the mission’s commander on Tuesday, is making his fourth trip into space, and that Zhu Yangzhu, an engineer, is the third member of the crew. China has put billions of dollars into its military-run space project in an effort to land humans on the moon by 2030, a decade after the United States and Russia will have achieved similar feats. Last year, China finished building Tiangong, its third and permanent space station. The “heavenly palace” Tiangong, whose name literally translates to “T” shaped, docked successfully with the main building in November. State news agency Xinhua said that the station had “the world’s first space-based cold atomic clock system” among its array of cutting-edge scientific equipment. An aspiration to keep humans in space for an extended period of time will be realized by keeping Tiangong in low Earth orbit between 400 and 450 kilometers (250 and 280 miles) for at least 10 years.
Constant crews of three astronauts will do research and put new technology through their paces. Beijing has stated that it is open to international collaboration on Tiangong, but the project will not be used for global cooperation on the size of the International Space Station. The scope of that collaboration is now unclear. After the United States cut off all ties with China in 2011, China essentially became unable to participate in ISS missions.
