by Beijing (AP) –
China announced the members of a three-person crew on Wednesday, which is launched as part of her growing exploration of space to his space station.
The astronauts of the Shenzhou 20 mission are Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie, Lin Xiqiang, Deputy General Director of the China spacoint agency. You will replace three astronauts at the Chinese space station. Like the one in front of them, they stay there for about six months.
The three will start on Thursday evening in China from Jiuquan on the edge of the Gobi desert in northwestern China.
The three-person crew was sent in October last year and has been in space for 175 days, said Lin.
Chen Dong, who previously worked at the Shenzhou 11 and Shenzhou 14 missions, is the group leader, while his two crew members will make their first trips to space. Chen Zhongrui was an Air Force Pilot and Wang Jie, engineer at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
“I am incomparably proud and performance to go back to space for my country,” Chen Dong told reporters on Wednesday. “Every trip to space is unprecedented. I look forward to gaining more experience and more breakthroughs through this flight.”
Chen Dong led the construction of the space station during the Shenzhou 14 mission.
In space, astronaut experiments carry out in space medicine and space technology. Carry out extrave -hikular trips; and make improvements at the space station.
China built its own space station after it was excluded due to the national security concerns of the US space station on the control of the country’s spatial program by the People’s Liberation Army, the military department of the Governing Communist Party.
China’s space program has grown rapidly in recent years. The space agency has landed a discoverer on Mars and a Rover on the other side of the moon. It aims to bring a person to the moon before 2030.
The returning astronauts are expected to land on April 29.
