China has launched three astronauts into space as part of efforts towards its goal of landing a crew on the Moon by 2030.The Shenzhou-23 vessel launched at 11:08pm on Sunday, local time, using the Long March-2F Y23 carrier rocket from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in north-west China.China's Shenzhou-23 manned space mission was launched as part of a wider bid to study the long-term impacts of residing in space. (AP: Ng Han Guan)Payload specialist Lai Ka-ying, a former Hong Kong police inspector who has a doctoral degree in computer forensics, 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 Zhiyuan, both from the astronaut division of the People's Liberation Army.China launches mission amid US space race to the MoonOne of the three astronauts will stay on the Tiangong space station for a year, in one of China's longest space missions ever, but short of the 14-and-a-half-month record set by a Russian cosmonaut in 1995.The astronaut would be decided later, depending on the progress of the mission, the China Manned Space Agency said on Saturday.Astronauts Zhu Yangzhu, Zhang Zhiyuan, and Lai Ka-ying, who is the first astronaut from Hong Kong, are on the Shenzhou-23. (Reuters: Maxim Shemetov)State media reported the astronaut's mission was to "explore human adaptability and performance limits" in long-duration spaceflight environments.China has sent astronauts to its space station almost a dozen times. However this launch comes amid a new race to the Moon, this time between Beijing and Washington. The United States has warned about what it alleges are Beijing's plans to colonise and mine lunar territory and resources.Beijing has strongly rejected those claims.The Shenzhou-23 took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. (AP: Ng Han Guan)NASA is seeking to achieve a crewed moon landing in 2028, two years ahead of China. The US aims to establish a long-term lunar presence as a stepping stone to eventual human exploration of Mars.In April, four NASA astronauts made a historic trip around the Moon as part of the Artemis II mission, flying farther from Earth than anyone before in the world's first crewed lunar mission in half a century.On Friday, Elon Musk's SpaceX made a largely successful, uncrewed test flight of its next-generation Starship rocket, which is designed to enable more frequent Starlink satellite launches and to send future NASA missions to the Moon.China, with less than four years until its 2030 deadline, faces a tall order of developing entirely new hardware and software specific to its lunar mission, proving it is mission-ready.Children and families gathered at China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center to watch the Shenzhou-23 crew take off. (Reuters: Maxim Shemetov)That will ensure its astronauts, used to the relative safety of Tiangong in low-Earth orbit, can safely make the riskier transition to the Moon's surface.China's Shenzhou missions have been sending trios of astronauts to the station for six-month stays since 2021.The Chinese space agency is training two Pakistani astronauts, one of whom could join an expected mission to Tiangong this year on a short-duration basis.China human-testing aim for long-term Moon baseThe previous mission, Shenzhou-22, was launched ahead of schedule in November to return three Chinese astronauts to Earth after their Shenzhou-20 vessel was damaged by space debris in orbit.China has only sent robots to the Moon, but its successive Shenzhou missions have highlighted the country's rapidly improving space capabilities.In June 2024, China used robots to become the first country to recover lunar samples from the Moon's far side.A successful crewed landing before 2030 would boost China's plans to establish, with Russia, a permanent base on the Moon by 2035.The Chinese lunar program's chief scientist, Wu Weiren, has said Beijing's public timeline is intentionally conservative.Over the past year, Beijing has been carrying out safety tests of hardware developed for the 2030 mission, including heavy-lift Long March-10 rockets, the Mengzhou spacecraft and the Lanyue lunar lander.The Shenzhou-23 flight will execute the first autonomous rapid rendezvous and docking procedure with the core module of Tiangong in preparation for the 2030 mission, which hinges on an automated lunar-orbit rendezvous between the Mengzhou capsule and the Lanyue lander.Scientists will also study the physiological effects of radiation exposure, bone density loss and psychological stress in space for the extended duration of the Shenzhou-23 mission.Beijing is already conducting the world's first human "artificial embryo" experiment in space, having sent samples of human stem cells to the Shenzhou-22 crew on the Tiangong this month, state media reported.The experiment is intended to study the long-term residence, survival and reproduction of human beings in space.Reuters