China is set to launch a new crewed mission to its Tiangong space station on Sunday, with one astronaut expected to remain in orbit for a full year — the longest space mission ever undertaken by the country.
The move is part of Beijing’s broader effort to gather data on long-term human survival in space as it pushes toward a crewed moon landing by 2030.
The Shenzhou-23 spacecraft is scheduled for liftoff at 11:08 p.m. local time (1508 GMT) aboard a Long March-2F Y23 rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China. Three astronauts will travel on the mission.
Among the crew is payload specialist Li Jiaying, a former Hong Kong police inspector, who will become the first astronaut from Hong Kong to participate in a Chinese spaceflight mission. He will be joined by Commander Zhu Yangzhu and Pilot Zhang Yuanzhi, both members of the People’s Liberation Army astronaut corps.
Chinese authorities said one member of the crew will remain aboard the Tiangong space station for approximately one year, making it one of the longest space missions in history, though still below the 14-and-a-half-month record established by a Russian cosmonaut in 1995. The China Manned Space Agency noted on Saturday that the astronaut selected for the extended stay would be determined later based on the mission’s progress.
China has carried out nearly a dozen crewed missions to Tiangong, but the latest launch comes as competition with the United States over lunar exploration intensifies. Washington has accused Beijing of harbouring ambitions to colonise and exploit resources on the moon.
NASA is targeting a crewed moon landing in 2028, two years before China’s planned mission. The United States also aims to establish a sustained lunar presence that could support future human missions to Mars.
Earlier in April, four NASA astronauts completed a landmark journey around the moon during the Artemis II mission, travelling farther from Earth than any humans before them in the first crewed lunar expedition in more than 50 years.
On Friday, SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, conducted a mostly successful uncrewed test flight of its next-generation Starship rocket. The spacecraft is intended to support more frequent Starlink satellite launches and future NASA moon missions.
China faces a major challenge in meeting its 2030 lunar deadline, as it continues developing new technologies and mission systems needed for a crewed moon landing. The effort is aimed at ensuring astronauts accustomed to the relative safety of low-Earth orbit aboard Tiangong can safely operate on the moon’s surface.
Since 2021, China’s Shenzhou programme has regularly transported teams of three astronauts to Tiangong for six-month missions. The Chinese space agency is also training two Pakistani astronauts, one of whom could join a future short-term mission to the station later this year.
The previous mission, Shenzhou-22, was launched ahead of schedule in November after the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft carrying three astronauts sustained damage from space debris while in orbit.
Although China has so far only landed robotic missions on the moon, its expanding space programme has demonstrated rapid technological progress. In June 2024, China became the first nation to retrieve samples from the far side of the moon using robotic spacecraft.
A successful crewed moon landing before 2030 would strengthen Beijing’s plans to establish a permanent lunar base with Russia by 2035.
Wu Weiren, chief scientist of China’s lunar programme, has stated that the country’s publicly announced timeline is deliberately conservative.
Over the past year, Chinese engineers have conducted multiple safety and performance tests involving technology designed for the 2030 lunar mission, including the heavy-lift Long March-10 rocket, the Mengzhou spacecraft, and the Lanyue lunar lander.
The Shenzhou-23 mission will also carry out the first autonomous rapid rendezvous and docking with Tiangong’s core module, a critical capability needed for future lunar missions involving automated docking between the Mengzhou capsule and the Lanyue lander in lunar orbit.
Scientists aboard the mission are expected to examine the effects of prolonged space exposure, including radiation, bone density reduction, and psychological stress associated with long-duration missions.
Chinese state media also reported that Beijing is conducting the world’s first human “artificial embryo” experiment in space. Human stem cell samples were recently delivered to the Tiangong station by the Shenzhou-22 crew as part of research into long-term human survival and reproduction in space.
