China Launches 6-Month Crewed Mission, Cements Position as Global Space Power

'China launched a three-person crew into space in the early hours of Saturday,' reports CNN, calling it 'a major step for the country's young space program, which is rapidly becoming one of the world's most advanced...'

They will dock at China's new space station, Tiangong (which means Heavenly Palace), six and a half hours after launch. They will live and work at the station for 183 days, or just about six months... 'This will certainly be their longest mission, which is quite impressive when you consider how early it is in their human spaceflight regimen,' said Dean Cheng, senior research fellow at the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy.

This is the second crewed mission during the construction of the space station, which China plans to have fully crewed and operational by December 2022. The first crewed mission, a three-month stay by three other astronauts, was completed last month. Six more missions have been scheduled before the end of next year, including two crewed missions, two laboratory modules and two cargo missions. 'For the Chinese, this is still early in their human spaceflight effort as they've been doing this for less than 20 years... and for fewer than 10 missions,' Cheng added. 'In the past, the Chinese put up a crewed flight only once every two to three years. Now, they're sending them up every few months.'
'If the Chinese maintain this pace... it reflects a major shift in the mission tempo for their human spaceflight efforts....'

China successfully landed an exploratory rover on the moon last December and one on Mars in May. The first module of the Tiangong space station launched in April. Just last week, an international team of scientists released their findings from the moon rocks China brought back to Earth... 'The European Space Agency, Russia, India, and Israel have suffered Moon or Mars probe failures in recent years; China succeeded with both on the first tries,' David Burbach, associate professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College, told CNN via email. Though the US still has the world's leading space program, he said, 'there's no doubt that China is the world's Number 2 space power today.'

China's ambitions span years into the future, with grand plans for space exploration, research and commercialization. One of the biggest ventures will be building a joint China-Russia research station on the moon's south pole by 2035 — a facility that will be open to international participation... Chinese astronauts have long been locked out of the International Space Station due to US political objections and legislative restrictions — which is why it has been a long-standing goal of China's to build a station of its own...

One reason space research cannot be divorced from terrestrial politics, and why the issue is so complicated, is because 'the Chinese space program is heavily influenced, and its human and lunar programs are overseen, by the Chinese military,' Cheng said. 'Cooperating with China in space means cooperating with the Chinese military.'

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