The first astronauts for China’s new space station have blasted off on the country’s longest crewed mission to date, a landmark step in establishing Beijing as a major space power.
The trio were aboard a Long March-2F rocket for the Tiangong station, where they will spend three months. It is China’s first crewed mission in nearly five years.
Liftoff took place on Thursday morning from the Jiuquan launch centre in north-west China’s Gobi desert.
Their Shenzhou-12 spacecraft will dock with the Tianhe main section of the space station, which was placed in orbit on 29 April.
The module has separate living spaces for each of them, a treadmill for exercise, and a communication
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