China sends first civilian astronaut into space

Accordingly, Gui Haichao, a payload specialist, will take off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 9:31 a.m. on May 30, local time, the information was announced by the China Manned Space Agency.

So far, all Chinese astronauts in space have been military personnel. A space agency spokesman told reporters that Gui, a professor at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, will be “primarily responsible for the on-orbit operation of the space science experiment parts.”

China sends first civilian astronaut into space.

The mission commander on May 30 will be Jing Haipeng, who has been to space three times before. Another member of the mission is engineer Zhu Yangzhu.

China plans to send astronauts to the moon by 2030. The country has invested billions of dollars in its military-run space program, trying to catch up with the US and Russia after years of hitting milestones.

They completed construction of their third and permanent space station, Tiangong, last year. The final T-shaped module of Tiangong successfully docked with the core structure in November.

The space station carries a number of advanced scientific instruments, including “ the world's first space-based cold atomic clock system,” Xinhua reported.

Tiangong is expected to maintain a low Earth orbit at an altitude of 400 - 450 km for at least 10 years. This realizes the ambition of maintaining a long-term human presence in space.

While China does not plan to use Tiangong for global cooperation on the scale of the International Space Station, Beijing has said it is open to foreign cooperation. It remains unclear how extensive that cooperation will be.

Phuong Anh (Source: Al Jazeera)

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