China launches Shenzhou-23 with first year-long space mission
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- Shenzhou-23 launched from the Jiuquan centre on Sunday aboard a Long March 2-F rocket, carrying three astronauts to Tiangong, with one crew member set to spend a full year in orbit — a first for China's program and a doubling of the station's standard six-month rotation.
- Lai Ka-ying, 43, a former Hong Kong police officer, became the first astronaut from the territory to fly to space; her crewmates are space engineer Zhu Yangzhu, 39, and former air force pilot Zhang Zhiyuan, 39, both on their first spaceflight.
- The mission is a key step in China's goal of landing astronauts on the moon before 2030 in competition with NASA's Artemis programme, with an orbital test of the next-generation Mengzhou crew spacecraft scheduled for 2026 to replace the Shenzhou line.
- China plans to host its first foreign astronaut, from Pakistan, aboard Tiangong by the end of this year, and aims to complete the first phase of the International Lunar Research Station by 2035.
- Macquarie University astrophysicist Richard de Grijs said a year-long stay pushes both hardware and humans into a different operational regime, flagging bone density loss, muscle wasting, radiation exposure, sleep disturbance, and psychological fatigue as the key long-duration risks.
- China has been excluded from the International Space Station since 2011, when the US banned NASA from collaborating with Beijing — a decision that catalysed Beijing's independent space station programme and its three-decade, multi-billion-dollar push to catch up with the US, Russia and Europe.
Why it matters: China is doubling its standard Tiangong stay to a full year — the longest any Chinese astronaut has spent in orbit — while testing the next-generation Mengzhou crew vehicle in 2026 and onboarding Pakistan's first astronaut by year-end, a coordinated build-up that targets a crewed moon landing by 2030 and a lunar research station by 2035.
