China launches Shenzhou-23 manned spaceship

China's Shenzhou-23 crewed spaceship blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the country's northwest on Sunday (May 24), sending three astronauts to its orbiting space station.

The spaceship, atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket, lifted off from the launch site at 11.08pm.

The crew members consist of mission commander Zhu Yangzhu, and fellow astronauts Zhang Zhiyuan and Lai Ka-ying, who is also the first astronaut from Hong Kong.

In another notable first, one of the crew members is set to undertake a year-long stay aboard the space station, double the usual duration of previous Shenzhou missions.

After entering orbit, the Shenzhou-23 spaceship performed a fast automated rendezvous and docking with the radial port of the space station core module Tianhe, forming a combination of three modules and three spacecraft.

Shenzhou-23 marks the 40th flight of China's manned spaceflight programme and the seventh manned flight mission since the Tiangong space station entered its application and development phase in late 2022. Read more: https://cna.asia/4fbdbeV

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