China launched the Shenzhou 23 spacecraft on Sunday, sending three astronauts to the Tiangong space station for a six-month-long stay. The spacecraft, carrying astronauts Zhu Yangzhu, Zhang Zhiyuan, and Lai Ka-ying, lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 11:08 p.m. local time.
The Shenzhou 23 mission is the 11th crewed mission to fly to the Tiangong space station, which was completed in late 2022. The astronauts will conduct over 100 new science and application projects, focusing on frontier fields such as space life science, materials science, microgravity fluid physics, aerospace medicine, and new space technologies.
According to Xinhua, the Shenzhou 23 crew will carry out a one-year in-orbit stay experiment, with one of the astronauts expected to become China’s first to stay in orbit for an entire year.