China sends first civilian to space with Shenzhou-16 liftoff

China on Tuesday (May 30) sent three astronauts to its Tiangong space station including a civilian scientist, a first for the country. The liftoff has come as China pursues plans for a manned mission to the Moon by 2030. The Shenzhou-16 crew lifted off atop a Long March 2F rocket. The launch took place from the Jiquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China. The rocket lifted offat 9:31 am local time (0131 GMT), AFP reported.

Jing Haipeng is the mission commander. This is his fourth trip off the Earth. Accompanying him are engineer Zhu Yangzhu and Gui Haichao, a Beihang University professor and first Chinese civilian in space.

China is spending billions of dollars on its military-run space programme and trying to catch up with the US and Russia.

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The Tiangong is a crown jewel of China's space programme, landed robotic rovers on Mars and the Moon. It has also made China the third country to put humans in orbit.

The mission is the first to the Tiangong space station since it entered its "application and development" stage, Beijing said.

The mission timeline

Once it reaches the orbit the Shenzhou-16 will dock at Tiangong space station's Tianhe core module before the crew meet three colleagues from the previous manned Shenzhou-15 flight, who have been at the space station for six months and will return to Earth in the coming days.

The mission will "carry out large-scale, in-orbit experiments... in the study of novel quantum phenomena, high-precision space time-frequency systems, the verification of general relativity, and the origin of life," CMSA spokesperson Lin Xiqiang told reporters on Monday.

A fresh supply of drinking water, food, clothing and propellant was made to the space station this month in order to make it ready for Shenzhou-16's arrival.

AFP quoted an expert who said that Tuesday's flight was "a regular crew rotation flight as one crew hands over to another", but even that was significant.

"Accumulating depth of experience in human spaceflight operations is important and doesn't involve new spectacular milestones all the time," said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

China is aiming to build a base on the Moon. On Monday, CMSA spokesman Lin reaffirmed China's plan of landing a manned mission on the Moon by 2030.

"The overall goal is to achieve China's first manned landing on the Moon by 2030 and carry out lunar scientific exploration and related technological experiments," he said.

(With inputs from agencies)

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