China Launches Astronauts to Tiangong Space Station: Video and Updates

After decades of military secrecy, Chinese authorities have opened their desert rocket launch center to a handful of visitors and called for cooperation into space.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">As tall as a 20-story building, a rocket carrying the Shenzhou 15 mission roared into the night sky of the Gobi Desert on Tuesday, carrying three astronauts to a rendezvous with China's newly completed space station.

The rocket launch was a split-screen event for China, the latest of a long string of technological achievements for the country, even as many of its citizens have been angry taking to the streets against strict pandemic controls.

L the air shook as the huge white rocket leapt into a starry, extremely cold night sky shortly before sunset a waxing crescent moon. Less than nine hours later, the three astronauts aboard Shenzhou 15 docked with the space station and greeted the three-person crew who were already there and had completed construction of the orbital outpost this fall.

This made the expedition to the new space station a milestone for China's rapidly advancing space program. Tiangong Outpost will now be permanently occupied, like the International Space Station. It is another marker set by China in its race to catch up with the United States and overtake it as the dominant power in space.

With a presence sustained in the low- In Earth orbit aboard Tiangong, Chinese space officials are preparing to send astronauts to the Moon, which NASA also plans to revisit before the end of the decade as part of its Artemis program.

“It won't take long; we can achieve the goal of manned moon landing,” said Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China's manned space program, in an interview at the launch center. China has developed a lunar lander, he added, without giving a date when it might be used.

The launch of Shenzhou 15 comes less than two weeks after NASA's final launch of its Artemis I mission following numerous delays. This flight put its unmanned Orion capsule into orbit around the Moon.

At the same time, Beijing embarked on a charm offensive from the top of the Group of 20 in Bali earlier this month, courting European nations and developing countries in particular. This includes space exploration. Chinese leader Xi Jinping made this point in a Nov. 21 letter to a United Nations symposium.

"China stands ready to work with other countries to strengthen exchanges and cooperation, jointly explore the mysteries of the universe, peacefully use outer space, and promote space technology to better benefit people in all countries around the world," Xi wrote. /p>

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