China announces launch of manned space mission to complete space station

Beijing: The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) on Saturday announced the launch of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft on Sunday, June 5. Chen Dong, Liu Yang, and Cai Xuzhe are the three astronauts selected to orbit in the manned spacecraft for the next 6 months.

Shenzhou-14 will be the third of the sevenths of a total of eleven missions that are set to complete by the space agency this year.

A Long March-2F carrier rocket, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China, will cast the spacecraft, which will later dock with the

Tiangong space station is currently under construction. Some important parts of the space station were built by another three-member Chinese crew who returned to earth last April, after six months.

Reports point out that once the International Space Station (ISS) of Russia retires, the only space station in orbit will be the Chinese Space Station (CSS). China will also take credit to be the only country to own a space station as ISS is built by partnering with several other countries.

The core idea of the Shenzhou-14 mission is to build the three module structure, with Tianhe, the core module, Wentian and Mengtian, the lab modules to complete the construction of the Tiangong space station.

The three-member crew will land in December after observing Tianzhou-5 cargo craft and Shenzhou-15 crewed spaceship dock with the core module Tianhe.