The Shenzhou-14 crew will spend six months on the Tiangong
station, during which it will oversee the addition of two laboratory modules to
join the main Tianhe living space that was launched in April 2021.
A Long March-2F rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite
Launch Center in the Gobi Desert in northwest China at 10:44am (02:44 GMT) with
the spacecraft Shenzhou-14, or “Divine Vessel”, and its three astronauts, a
live broadcast by state television showed.
The mission is headed by commander Chen Dong, 43, joined by
fellow astronauts Liu Yang, 43, and Cai Xuzhe, 46. They will live and work on
the space station for about 180 days before returning to Earth in December.
The space station, when completed by the year-end, will lay
a significant milestone in China’s three-decade-long crewed space programme,
first approved in 1992.
The completion of the structure, about a fifth of the
International Space Station (ISS) by mass, is a source of pride among common Chinese
people, and caps President Xi Jinping’s 10 years as leader of the ruling
Communist Party.
“The Shenzhou-14 mission is a pivotal battle in the
construction stage of China’s space station,” Chen told a news conference in
Jiuquan on Saturday. “The task will be tougher, there will be more problems and
the challenges will be greater.”
The 43-year-old said the arrival of the new modules will
“provide more stability, more powerful functions, more complete equipment”.
Liu, 43, is also a space veteran and was China’s first
female astronaut to reach space on board the Shenzhou-9 in 2012. Cai, 46, is
making his first space trip
They will also install equipment inside and outside the
space station and carry out a range of scientific research.
China’s space programme launched its first astronaut into
orbit in 2003, making it only the third country to do so on its own after the
former Soviet Union and the United States.
It has landed robot rovers on the moon and placed one on
Mars last year. China has also returned lunar samples and officials have
discussed a possible crewed mission to the moon.
China’s space programme is run by the Communist Party’s
military wing, the People’s Liberation Army, prompting the US to exclude it
from the ISS.
Chen, Liu and Cai will be joined at the end of their mission for three to five days by the crew of the upcoming Shenzhou-15, marking the first time the station will have had six people on board.
The space station is designed for a lifespan of at least 10
years.