Chinese Manned Mission Blasts Off to Space Station

China launched two astronauts into space on Monday on a mission to dock with an experimental space station. The 30-day mission is in preparation for the construction of a complete facility six years from now.

The Shenzhou 11 mission took off aboard a Long March-2F carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 7:30 a.m. (2330 GMT).

It will dock with the Tiangong 2 space station pioneer facility within two days. Its purpose: to test systems and processes in preparation for the launching of the station’s core module in 2018. Further, the astronauts will conduct experiments in medicine and different space-related technologies.

The entire station will start full operations in 2022. The operations commence immediately after the attachment of two experiment modules and will run for at least a decade.

The Tiangong 1, an earlier experimental space station launched in 2011, was retired in March after extending its mission for two years and docking with three visiting spacecraft. China considers the Tiangong stations as the foundations to a mission to Mars by the end of the decade.

The astronauts manning the mission are Chen Dong, 37, and Jing Haipeng, who is flying his third mission.

Jing, 49, said at a briefing Sunday that it is an astronauts dream and pursuit to be able to perform various space missions.

China is only the third country after Russia and the US to accomplish a crewed space mission when it launched its first manned mission in 2003. It has since conducted a spacewalk and landed its Yutu rover on the moon. Administrators suggest a manned touchdown on the moon may also be in the program’s future.

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