JIUQUAN SATELLITE LAUNCH CENTER, China: China embarked on a historic mission by sending its most youthful crew ever to its orbiting space station on Thursday, with the aim of landing astronauts on the moon by 2030.
The Shenzhou 17 spacecraft took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, situated on the outskirts of the Gobi Desert in northwestern China, atop a Long March 2-F rocket at precisely 11:14 a.m. (0314 GMT).
As disclosed by the China Manned Space Agency, the average age of the three-member crew is the most youthful since the inception of the space station construction mission, as reported earlier by the state broadcaster CCTV. China Daily, a state media outlet, noted that the average age of this crew is 38 years.
In pursuit of their ambition to send astronauts to the moon within the current decade, Beijing finds itself in a spirited competition with the United States to achieve groundbreaking milestones in the realm of outer space. This dynamic underscores the ongoing rivalry between the world’s two largest economies, spanning the technological, military, and diplomatic domains.
The trio comprising Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie, and Jiang Xinlin will assume the roles of the outgoing crew, who have spent the last six months on the space station. Notably, Tang Hongbo, an experienced astronaut, previously commanded a space mission that spanned three months in 2021.
During their upcoming mission, the new crew is set to engage in a range of experiments, encompassing space medicine, space technology, and various other scientific areas. Furthermore, they will be responsible for the installation and maintenance of equipment both inside and outside the space station, as confirmed by the space agency.
In an announcement made on a recent Wednesday, the agency unveiled plans to launch a cutting-edge telescope designed for in-depth exploration of the universe. While the telescope promises to facilitate comprehensive sky surveys and mapping, no specific timeframe for its installation was disclosed.
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China’s enduring fascination with the celestial bodies, cultivated over thousands of years, has seamlessly transitioned into its modern pursuit of space exploration and scientific leadership. The nation’s aspiration led to the development of its own space station, an initiative conceived in response to its exclusion from the International Space Station. This exclusion was primarily driven by U.S. apprehensions regarding control vested in the People’s Liberation Army, the military arm of the ruling Communist Party.
China, marked by its historic 2003 manned space mission, became the third nation, following the former Soviet Union and the United States, to successfully send an astronaut into space using indigenous resources. Although the United States presently enjoys an advantage over China in terms of expenditure, supply chains, and technological capabilities, China has made significant breakthroughs, including lunar sample retrieval after decades and the successful landing of a rover on the relatively unexplored far side of the moon.
Concurrently, the United States is determined to return astronauts to the lunar surface by the end of 2025, driven by a renewed commitment to crewed space missions and complemented by collaboration with private sector entities like SpaceX and Blue Origin.
In addition to their lunar exploration endeavours, both nations have achieved separate feats, such as rover landings on Mars, with China gearing up to emulate the United States by sending a spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
