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China will send its first civilian astronaut to orbit with the latest crewed launch to the country's Tiangong space station.
The mission, scheduled to launch tomorrow morning, May 30, will lift a crew of three aboard the Shenzhou 16 spacecraft attached to a Long March-2F rocket, a report from South China Morning Post reveals.
China's first civilian astronaut to fly to orbital station
To date, all crew members at China's orbital station have been members of the People's Liberation Army, the military wing of the country's ruling Communist Party.
For tomorrow's mission, though, the crew will be made up of civilian Gui Haichao, a professor at Beijing's top aerospace research institute, as well as mission commander Jing Haipeng and spacecraft engineer Zhu Yangzhu.
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36-year-old Gui Haichao, from Beihang University in Beijing, will act as a payload specialist on the mission. During a press conference, he stated that it is his long-held dream to move his "beloved research work" into space. Jing Haipeng, meanwhile, will fly on his fourth mission to space.
"When I learned China was recruiting the first cohort of payload specialists in 2018, I applied without hesitation," Gui, who is from the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan, explained. "As China’s first payload specialist to enter space, I felt very lucky and happy. The new role in space missions and new opportunities in space science came true, thanks to the new stage of the Chinese space station."
Gui will be responsible for managing the mission's payload, operating equipment, and managing experiments.
China's Tiangong station expansion plans
The crew is scheduled to launch from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China at 9:31 am local time tomorrow, May 30. The crew is set to stay on the Tiangong space station until November.
During a press conference, Lin Xiqiang, Deputy Director of the Chinese Manned Space Agency, stated that the station will be expanded. Back in November, after lifting the third module of Tiangong to orbit, China's space administration announced that the orbital station was complete in November when the third module was lifted into orbit.
The fourth module will be added "at an appropriate time to advance support for scientific experiments and provide the crew with improved working and living conditions," Lin said, adding that the country wants to welcome foreign astronauts aboard the station.
