China has launched three astronauts to its Tiangong space station, including a civilian scientist, as part of its plans to send a manned mission to the Moon by the end of the decade. The Shenzhou-16 crew took off atop a Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China. The Tiangong is the crown jewel of China’s space programme, which has also seen it land robotic rovers on Mars and the Moon and made it the third country to put humans in orbit. The mission will “carry out large-scale, in-orbit experiments… in the study of novel quantum phenomena, high-precision space time-frequency systems, the verification of general relativity, and the origin of life,” according to CMSA spokesperson Lin Xiqiang.
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