China’s Shenzhou-23 crew has arrived at the Tiangong space station, adding a new chapter to the country’s steadily expanding human spaceflight program as it pursues a first crewed lunar landing before 2030.
The Shenzhou-23 spacecraft lifted off atop a Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 23:08 Beijing Time on May 24, 2026. According to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), the launch and subsequent fast, automated rendezvous and docking with Tiangong were declared a complete success.
The three-person crew is commanded by Zhu Yangzhu, on his second spaceflight, with Zhang Zhiyuan serving as pilot and Lai Ka-ying (Li Jiaying in Mandarin) as payload specialist. Lai, a former Hong Kong police officer, is the first astronaut from Hong Kong to fly in space. One member of the crew is scheduled to remain on orbit for about a year, the longest single-mission stay in China’s human spaceflight history, while the mission itself is planned for roughly six months of nominal operations.
CMSA officials say the crew will conduct more than 100 scientific and application projects aboard Tiangong, including research in space life science, materials science, microgravity fluid physics, aerospace medicine, and new space technologies. The astronauts will also perform extravehicular activities, manage cargo transfers, and install and retrieve external experiment payloads, alongside planned educational outreach activities.
The extended stay experiment supports China’s broader ambitions in deep-space exploration, including its program to send astronauts to the lunar surface before 2030. That effort relies on the under-development Long March 10 crew-rated rocket and a new generation crew spacecraft and lunar lander, which are expected to operate through dual-launch missions that rendezvous in lunar orbit before a descent to the Moon.