China on Sunday sent three astronauts to its Tiangong space station, including one set for a record one-year stay, enabling the study of long-duration human physiology in space as Beijing works towards its ambition of a crewed moon landing by 2030.
The Shenzhou-23 vessel launched at 11:08 p.m. (1508 GMT) using the Long March-2F Y23 carrier rocket from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, with three Chinese astronauts on board.
Payload specialist Li Jiaying, a former Hong Kong police inspector, is the first astronaut from the city to take part in a Chinese space mission. The other crew members are commander Zhu Yangzhu and pilot Zhang Yuanzhi, both from the People's Liberation Army's astronaut division.
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One of the three is to stay on the Tiangong space station for a year, one of the longest space missions ever but short of the 14-1/2-month record set by a Russian cosmonaut in 1995. That astronaut will be decided later, depending on the progress of the mission, the China Manned Space Agency said on Saturday.
