by China will send a new team from Astronauten to his space station on Thursday when it marched to his ambition to become a space for space in order to keep up with the dominance of the United States.
Beijing has pumped billions from dollars into his space program in recent years to achieve what President Xi Jinping describes as the “space room” of the Chinese people.
The second largest economy in the world has courageous plans to send a occupation mission to the moon by the end of the decade and finally build a base on the lunar surface.
It will mark its last milestone on Thursday when the Shenzhou 20 mission will free a team of three astronauts to the self-made space station in Tiangong in China.
According to the China Mann Space Agency (CMSA) at 5.17 p.m. (0917 GMT), the purely male trio will ward off the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the remote northwest desert.
The mission has Chen Dong, 46, a former fighting pilot and an experienced Space Explorer, who was the first Chinese astronaut in 2022, who rose in orbit for more than 200 cumulative days.
The other two crew members and 40-year-old former Air Force pilot, Chen Zhongrui, and the 35-year-old former space technology engineer Wang Jie-Werden take their first escape flight.
Hundreds of people who swing flower bouquets and miniature national flags, the hours before the flight to release the astronauts on Thursday afternoon, packed into the streets of the space base.
A band played a stirring military march as the trio, which was dressed in white space suits and waved in front of a red banner, which announced: “Learn from our astronauts! Greet our astronauts!”
“We wish you success!” The crowd screamed in unison when the crew members passed.
Live images on state television then showed that the three astronauts were transported by bus to the starting point, could be seen over the long distances of empty deserts.
The crew will work in Tiangong for six months, carry out experiments in physics and organic sciences and install protective equipment against space waste.
For the first time, you will also bring with you on planaries-water-flaxworms known for your regenerative skills.
The team will also carry out space path, fill up and carry out general maintenance on the space station.
Three astronauts, which are currently to return to Earth on April 29 on April 29, after the handover process has been completed.
Bus loads from space enthusiasts waited a few hours before the start on Thursday on a barren highway and defied the high desert sun to take a look at the rocket sitting on the horizon.
A kiosk at the entrance to the start base led a lively trade in toy compartments and mission memorabilia.
– jewel in the crown –
During a government trip on Wednesday afternoon, the AFP journalists saw the rocket in a sky blue starting tower, surrounded by red flags, as a worker in blue overalls before the start carried out final checks.
China’s space program is the third that brings people into the orbit and has also landed robot rover on Mars and the moon, as parity is looking for parity with the two established sky powers in the world, the United States and Russia.
Tiangong, whose name means rotating teams of three astronauts every six months in Chinese every six months, is the jewel in his crown.
China has been excluded from the international space station since 2011 when the United States banned NASA from working with Beijing.
Since then it has been attempted to bring other countries to its space program, and in February a contract signed a contract with the long -standing allied Pakistan to bring the first foreign astronaut on board Tiangong.
As part of this process, “two Pakistani astronauts are selected to come to China for training,” confirmed the CMSA on Wednesday.
MJW-PFC/Je/PBT
