China is preparing to send its next crewed mission to the Tiangong space station. The Shenzhou 21 spacecraft will lift off at 11:44 p.m. on Friday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, as confirmed by the China Manned Space Agency. This will be the sixth crewed mission during the space station’s application and development phase and the 37th mission of China’s overall crewed space program.
The Shenzhou 21 mission will conduct an in orbit crew rotation with the existing Shenzhou 20 team. The new crew will stay aboard the station for about six months. During their stay, they will carry out scientific research, extravehicular activities, equipment installation, cargo handling, educational outreach and external payload retrieval tasks.
Once in orbit, the spacecraft is expected to perform a fast automated rendezvous and docking with the Tianhe core module in about three and a half hours. This will form a combined structure made up of three spacecraft and three modules. The crew will also receive the Tianzhou 10 cargo ship and later welcome the Shenzhou 22 crew during their mission period.
The three member Shenzhou 21 crew consists of Zhang Lu, Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang. Zhang Lu, who previously flew on the Shenzhou 15 mission, will serve as mission commander and space pilot. Wu Fei will take the role of flight engineer and Zhang Hongzhang will serve as payload specialist. Both Wu and Zhang Hongzhang are making their first journey to space.
During the mission, the crew will conduct 27 scientific projects across fields such as life science, biotechnology, aerospace medicine, space materials and fluid physics. One notable experiment will involve raising four mice in orbit, marking the first such experiment using domestic rodents in China’s space program. The study will examine how weightlessness and confinement affect behavior and biological systems, with the mice returning to Earth for further analysis.
Meanwhile, the selection of Pakistani astronauts has begun under a cooperation agreement. The process includes three phases, with initial screening in Pakistan and later stages in China. Two selected candidates will train alongside Chinese astronauts and one will join a short duration mission as a payload specialist to conduct scientific tasks in orbit.
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