For the Shenzhou 16 mission, scheduled to launch in May, and the Shenzhou 17 mission, scheduled to launch six months later, two three-person crews have been chosen.
The astronauts who will fly two crewed missions to its Tiangong space station this year have been chosen by China. Later this year, China will send two crews to the Tiangong space station, which is now fully functional, where they will spend six months conducting scientific research and maintaining the space station.
For the Shenzhou 16 mission, scheduled to launch in May, and the Shenzhou 17 mission, scheduled to launch six months later, two three-person crews have been chosen. The missions will launch from Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert on Long March 2F rockets.
Each mission also includes a backup crew that is prepared to step in and take over for the primary crew if necessary.
Yang Liwei, the deputy chief designer of China’s human spaceflight programme, told Chinese broadcaster CCTV that the astronauts of crewed missions, including the astronauts who will perform the mission and the backup crew, will be chosen one to one and a half years before the start of the spaceflight mission.
Yang, who was also China’s first astronaut in space, continued, “Now we’ve basically conducted astronaut selection for two missions together, and will select a backup crew.
The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) used to send a backup crew for a space mission on the flight after. This seems to have changed, which is most likely a result of the adjustments needed to launch crewed missions every six months.
Prior to Shenzhou 12, which made the first visit to the Tiangong Station’s core module in 2021, China had a gap of almost five years. Shenzhou 11 was launched in 2016, and Shenzhou 12 was launched in 2021.
The fact that China continues to withhold the astronauts’ identities until just before launch is one thing that has not changed. The People’s Liberation Army-run CMSA typically announces the crew at a press conference one day prior to launch.
A third group of new astronauts will be recruited by China in 2020. The 18 individuals, made up of 17 men and one woman, ought to have finished their basic training by now and could be qualified to fly by 2023. We don’t yet know who they are.
In October, CMSA started seeking a fourth group of astronaut candidates. “Initially selected as astronauts were air force pilots, but as time has gone on, we have astronauts from colleges, universities, research organisations, engineering departments, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The selection process is open to people from all backgrounds, “Ye said.