Three taikonauts will travel in June on a final six-month mission to Tiangong station to finish its construction.
China is close to completing the construction of its own space station called Tiangong and for this it is preparing a new launch of taikonauts , the name by which its astronauts are known.
The Shenzhou XIV rocket was moved to the launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Inner Mongolia on Sunday, state media reported, with a launch scheduled “in the next few days.”
This means that the departure of taikonauts to space would be as close as the first days of June.
6 months to Tiangong
Currently, the main module of the Tiangong, Tianhe , is already in orbit and has kept three of its taikonauts, including a female.
Now, three more scientists will travel to this laboratory to await the next components of the spacecraft: one will arrive in July and the other in October, according to the official China Daily newspaper.
Once Tiangong is completed, China will be the only country to operate a space station of its own, adding to other achievements such as landing on Mars last year and landing on the far side of the Moon in 2019.
space conquest
Under Xi Jinping’s presidency, China has stepped up efforts to match the US as the dominant power in space, partnering with Russia on a proposed lunar research station and opposing the Washington-backed Artemis Accords , which aim to goal to help govern future space activity like mining on the moon.
Zhurong, the rover China landed on Mars last year, went into temporary inactivity due to a dust storm, according to state media, citing the China National Space Administration, which predicted the rover would resume operations around December. .