On Thursday, China sent a new crew to its Tiangong space
station, the latest mission in a developing space programme that aims to send
people to the Moon by 2030.

At 11:14 a.m. (0314 GMT), the Shenzhou-17 spacecraft
launched of ffrom the Jiuquan launch site in northwest China, carrying a
three-astronaut crew with the youngest average age since the space station’s
inception.

Hundreds of fans waved the Chinese national flag and
clutched yellow flowers as the three astronauts, dressed in white and blue
spacesuits, were introduced to the audience at a farewell ceremony.

As the space passengers went gently down a narrow route
between the throng, smiling and waving goodbye before boarding a bus to the
launch site, the patriotic song “Ode to the Motherland” was sung.

Tang Hongbo, the crew’s captain, is on his maiden return
mission to the space station.

Tang Shengjie and Jiang Xinlin, both in their thirties and
making their first space voyages, accompany him.

With an average age of 38, the all-male crew is the youngest
ever to man a mission to the space station.

According to Lin Xiqiang, the Deputy Head of the China
Manned Space Agency, they would “perform various in-orbit space science
and application payload tests and experiments.”

They will also perform maintenance on the station to repair
“minor damages” caused by space debris, he said.

 “We have found that the solar wings of the space
station had been hit by tiny space particles several times,” he said.

 Gobi launch 

Members of the previous Shenzhou-16 crew, who have been
aboard Tiangong for nearly five months, are getting ready to welcome the trio
before returning to Earth next week.

 Hundreds of spectators gathered near the rocket site at the
Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert on Thursday morning, some
dressed in the blue uniforms of China’s space agency.

 As a loudspeaker blared a countdown, the rocket lifted up,
spewing plumes of smoke across the launch pad and the barren, flat desert area
around the site, before the engines’ increasingly loud boom drowned out the
cheers.

 A livestream showed the space station’s crew watching their
climb in anticipation of their arrival.

A space programme official declared the launch a
“complete success” after the rocket had been airborne for around 15
minutes. Tiangong, the crown jewel of Beijing’s space project, is constantly
crewed by rotating teams of three astronauts.

Space dream 

Plans for China’s “space dream” have been put into
overdrive under President Xi Jinping. The world’s second-largest economy has
pumped billions of dollars into its military-run space programme in an effort
to catch up with the United States and Russia. In June, the return capsule of
the Shenzhou-15 spaceship touched down at a landing site in the northern Inner
Mongolia region, with state media hailing the mission as a “complete
success”. That month also saw the launch of the Shenzhou-16 capsule, which
carried the first Chinese civilian — Beihang University Professor Gui Haichao
— into orbit.

That crew will return to Earth on October 31 after
completing a handover, officials said Wednesday. Beijing also aims to send a
crewed mission to the Moon by 2030 and plans to build a base on the lunar
surface. Deputy Director Lin reiterated that aim Wednesday, saying that the
“goal of landing Chinese people on the moon by 2030 will be realised as
scheduled”.