China yesterday launched a rocket carrying three astronauts on a mission to complete construction on its new space station, the latest milestone in Beijing’s drive to become a major space power.
The trio blasted off in a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan launch center in northwestern China’s Gobi desert, with the team to spend six months expanding the Tiangong space station, state broadcaster China Central Television said.
Tiangong, which means “heavenly palace,” is expected to become fully operational by the end of this year. China’s heavily promoted space program has already seen the nation land a rover on Mars and send probes to the moon.
Photo: AFP
The Shenzhou-14 crew is tasked with “completing in-orbit assembly and construction of the space station,” as well as “commissioning of equipment” and conducting scientific experiments, state-run China Global Television Network said on Saturday.
Led by air force pilot Chen Dong (陳冬), the three-person crew’s main challenge is to connect the station’s two lab modules to the main body.
Dong, along with fellow pilots Liu Yang (劉洋) and Cai Xuzhe (蔡旭哲), are to become the second crew to spend six months aboard the Tiangong after the last returned to Earth in April following 183 days on the space station.
Tiangong’s core module entered orbit earlier last year and is expected to operate for at least a decade.
The station shares a similar design with the Soviet Mir station that orbited Earth from the 1980s until 2001.
The world’s second-largest economy has poured billions into its military-run space program, with hopes of having a permanently crewed space station this year and eventually sending humans to the moon.
The country has made large strides in catching up with the US and Russia, whose astronauts and cosmonauts have decades of experience in space exploration.
Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the country’s plans for its heavily promoted “space dream” have been put into overdrive.
In addition to a space station, Beijing is also planning to build a base on the moon, and the Chinese National Space Administration said it aims to launch a crewed lunar mission by 2029.
China has been excluded from the International Space Station (ISS) since 2011, when the US banned NASA from engaging with the country.
While China does not plan to use its space station for global cooperation on the scale of the ISS, Beijing has said it is open to foreign collaboration.
The ISS is due for retirement after 2024, although NASA has said it could remain functional until 2030.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly