China Launches Year-Long Space Mission in Push for Moon

China is set to send three astronauts to its Tiangong space station on Sunday, including one who will remain in orbit for a full year, the country’s longest human space mission to date.

The Shenzhou-23 spacecraft is scheduled to launch at 11:08 p.m. local time from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, using a Long March-2F Y23 carrier rocket.

The crew includes commander Zhu Yangzhu, pilot Zhang Yuanzhi and payload specialist Li Jiaying, a former Hong Kong police inspector who will become the first astronaut from the city to take part in a Chinese space mission. One of the three astronauts will remain on Tiangong for a year, though Chinese officials said the decision on who stays will depend on the progress of the mission.

The extended stay is intended to help China study the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body, including radiation exposure, bone density loss and psychological stress. The data will support Beijing’s goal of landing astronauts on the moon by 2030.

China has sent astronauts to Tiangong for six-month missions since 2021, but the year-long stay would bring its program closer to the longest space missions carried out by Russia and the United States.

The launch comes as the US and China accelerate competing lunar programs. NASA is aiming for a crewed moon landing in 2028 under the Artemis program, while China is targeting 2030 and hopes to establish a permanent lunar base with Russia by 2035.

China has not yet sent astronauts to the moon, but its robotic lunar program has advanced quickly. In June 2024, it became the first country to retrieve samples from the moon’s far side.

Beijing has been testing hardware for its lunar mission, including the Long March-10 rocket, the Mengzhou crew spacecraft and the Lanyue lunar lander. The Shenzhou-23 mission will also carry out China’s first autonomous rapid rendezvous and docking procedure with Tiangong’s core module, a capability needed for future lunar-orbit docking between its crew capsule and lander.

Chinese state media also reported that Beijing has begun what it described as the world’s first human “artificial embryo” experiment in space, using human stem cell samples sent to the Shenzhou-22 crew earlier this month. The experiment is intended to study long-term human survival and reproduction in space.