The Shenzhou 16 spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan launch centre on the edge of the Gobi Desert in north-western China atop a Long March 2-F rocket.
The crew, including China’s first civilian astronaut, will overlap briefly with three astronauts currently aboard the Tiangong station, who will then return to Earth after completing their six-month mission.
A third module was added to the station in November, and Chinese space programme officials said on Monday (29 May) that they have plans to expand it, along with launching a crewed mission to the Moon before 2030.
China built its own space station after it was excluded from the International Space Station, largely due to US concerns over the Chinese space programme’s intimate ties with the People’s Liberation Army, the military branch of the ruling Communist Party.
China’s first manned space mission in 2003 made it the third country after the former Soviet Union and the US to put a person into space...