Beijing: China on Thursday sent three astronauts to its under-construction space station, where they will stay in its core module ‘Tianhe’ for three months. This is China’s first mission in five years in which it has sent a human to space.
Tianhe is the third and largest space station sent by China. Its core module was launched into orbit on 29 April. These astronauts are aboard the spacecraft ‘Shenzhou-12’, which was launched from the North-West Jiuquan Launch Center on a Long March-2F rocket. These three passengers are Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming, and Tang Hongbo. It was declared successful a few minutes after the launch. According to the ‘China Manned Space Agency’ (CMSA), China has sent its passengers to space for the seventh time, but this is the first Chinese mission to carry astronauts during the construction of the space station.
China sent a human to space for the last time in 2016, about five years ago. In 2016, two male astronauts went to space in Shenzhou-11 and stayed there for 33 days. The three-member team that went today is expected to break that record. These astronauts will stay in space for three months during which they will do repair and maintenance work. The space station will watch the world from the sky to China and compete with the aging International Space Station (ISS). The ISS is a project of NASA (USA), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada).
