Astronauts Zhu Yangzhu, Zhang Zhiyuan, and Lai Ka-ying, who is the first astronaut from Hong Kong, gesture as they attend a press conference before the Shenzhou-23 spaceflight mission to China’s Tiangong space station, at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, near Jiuquan, Gansu province, China, May 23, 2026.
| Photo Credit:
REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo
China will send an
astronaut to its space station on Sunday for a year, a record
length for the country, enabling the study of long-duration
human physiology in space as Beijing works towards its ambition
of a crewed moon landing by 2030.
The Shenzhou-23 vessel is scheduled to launch at 11:08 p.m.
(1508 GMT) using the Long March-2F Y23 carrier rocket from
Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, with three
Chinese astronauts on board.
Payload specialist Li Jiaying, a former Hong Kong police
inspector, will be the first astronaut from the city to take
part in a Chinese space mission. The other crew members are
commander Zhu Yangzhu and pilot Zhang Yuanzhi, both from the
People’s Liberation Army’s astronaut division.
CHINA, U.S. SET SIGHTS ON MOON
One of the three is to stay on the Tiangong space station
for a year, one of the longest space missions ever but short of
the 14-1/2 month record set by a Russian cosmonaut in 1995. That
astronaut will be decided later, depending on the progress of
the mission, the China Manned Space Agency said on Saturday.
China has sent astronauts to its space station almost a
dozen times, but this launch comes amid an accelerating race to
the moon with the U.S., which has warned about what it alleges
are Beijing’s plans to colonise and mine lunar territory and
resources.
Beijing has strongly rejected these claims.
NASA is seeking to achieve a crewed moon landing in 2028,
two years ahead of China. The U.S. aims to establish a long-term
lunar presence as a stepping stone to eventual human exploration
of Mars.
In April, four NASA astronauts made a historic trip around
the moon as part of the Artemis II mission, flying farther from
Earth than anyone before in the world’s first crewed lunar
mission in half a century.
On Friday Elon Musk’s SpaceX made a largely successful,
uncrewed test flight of its next-generation Starship rocket,
which is designed to enable more frequent Starlink satellite
launches and to send future NASA missions to the moon.
China, with less than four years until its 2030 deadline,
faces a tall order of developing entirely new hardware and
software specific to its lunar mission, proving it is
mission-ready. That will ensure its astronauts, used to the
relative safety of Tiangong in low-Earth orbit, can safely make
the riskier transition to the moon’s surface.
China’s Shenzhou missions have been sending trios of
astronauts to the station for six-month stays since 2021. The
Chinese space agency is training two Pakistani astronauts, one
of whom could join an expected mission to Tiangong this year on
a short-duration basis.
GOAL OF PERMANENT LUNAR BASE BY 2035
The previous mission, Shenzhou-22, was launched ahead of
schedule in November to return three Chinese astronauts to Earth
after their Shenzhou-20 vessel was damaged by space debris in
orbit.
China has only sent robots to the moon, but its successive
Shenzhou missions highlight the country’s rapidly improving
space capabilities. In June 2024, China became the first country
to recover lunar samples from the moon’s far side, using robots.
A successful crewed landing before 2030 would boost China’s
plans to establish a permanent base on the moon by 2035 with
Russia.
The Chinese lunar programme’s chief scientist, Wu Weiren,
has said Beijing’s public timeline is intentionally
conservative.
Over the past year, Beijing has been carrying out safety
tests of hardware developed for the 2030 mission, including
heavy-lift Long March-10 rockets, the Mengzhou spacecraft and
the Lanyue lunar lander.
The Shenzhou-23 flight will execute the first autonomous
rapid rendezvous and docking procedure with the core module of
Tiangong in preparation for the 2030 mission, which hinges on an
automated lunar-orbit rendezvous between the Mengzhou capsule
and the Lanyue lander.
Scientists will also study the physiological effects of
radiation exposure, bone density loss and psychological stress
in space for the extended duration of the Shenzhou-23 mission.
Beijing is conducting the world’s first human “artificial
embryo” experiment in space, having sent samples of human stem
cells to the Shenzhou-22 crew on the Tiangong this month, state
media reported. The experiment is intended to study the
long-term residence, survival and reproduction of human beings
in space.
Published on May 24, 2026
