Astronauts sent on mission to complete space station

The crew of the Shenzhou XIV mission, China's ninth manned spaceflight, arrived at the Tiangong space station on Sunday evening, several hours after their spacecraft was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the northwestern Gobi Desert.

The three astronauts-mission commander Senior Colonel Chen Dong, Senior Colonel Liu Yang and Senior Colonel Cai Xuzhe-had entered the space station's core module, Tianhe, by 8:50 pm.

They are scheduled to stay in the outpost, orbiting 400 kilometers above the Earth, for six months to complete the assembly in space of the colossal station.

Their Shenzhou XIV spacecraft was launched by a Long March 2F rocket that blasted off at 10:44 am from a service tower at the oasislike Jiuquan center.

It is the second time that Chen and Liu have gone into space, and Cai's first, making him the 14th Chinese astronaut in outer space.

When their mission is completed, around the end of this year, the Tiangong space station will have become fully operational.

The three astronauts' mission has inaugurated a 10-year period in which, barring unforeseen circumstances, Chinese astronauts will be in space every day.

Shenzhou XIV is the sixth spacecraft to visit Tiangong and the third crewed ship to transport astronauts to the orbiting outpost.

Tiangong currently consists of four sections-Tianhe, the core module; the Shenzhou XIV craft; and the Tianzhou 3 and Tianzhou 4 cargo ships.

Pang Zhihao, a retired analyst from the China Academy of Space Technology and an independent spaceflight researcher, said on Sunday that the Shenzhou XIV crew's tasks are more demanding and challenging than those handled by the Shenzhou XII and XIII crews.

"They will not only need to monitor the docking of the Tianhe module and the two space labs, but also are responsible for assembling and configuring many instruments inside the labs," he said.

"What's more, it will be the first time that large components, namely the two space labs, will be linked with the core module. There will likely be technical uncertainties that the astronauts may have to deal with."