China rocket taking 3 to space station to blast off Tuesday
CTV
A rocket carrying three astronauts to finish building China's space station will blast off Tuesday amid intensifying competition with the U.S., the government said Monday.
A rocket carrying three astronauts to finish building China's space station will blast off Tuesday amid intensifying competition with the U.S., the government said Monday.
The crew includes a veteran of a 2005 space mission and two first-time astronauts, according to the China Manned Space Agency.
The Shenzhou-15 mission will take off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert at 11:08 p.m. Tuesday night, the agency said. A Long March-2F carrier rocket, China's standard workhorse for crewed missions, will be used to sling it into space, it said.
The six-month mission, commanded by Fei Junlong and crewed by Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu, will be the last "in the construction phase of China's space station," agency official Ji Qiming told reporters Monday.
Fei, 57, is a veteran of the 2005 four-day Shenzhou-6 mission, the second time China sent a human into space. Deng and Zhang are making their first space flights.
The station's third and final module docked with the station earlier this month, one of the last steps in China's more than decade-long effort to maintain a constant crewed presence in orbit.
The astronauts will overlap briefly onboard the station, named Tiangong, with the previous crew, who arrived in early June for a six-month stay.
