China launched the Shenzhou 13 manned spacecraft at 12:23 am, October 16th, 2021 by a Long March 2F carrier rocket at the Jiuquan center, carrying three astronauts who will stay inside the country's Tiangong space station for six months.
It' is expected to be the longest space journey by Chinese astronauts, doubling the time of their peers in the Shenzhou 12 mission. It is transporting Major General Zhai Zhigang, the mission cammander, Senior Colonel Wang Yaping and Senior Colonel Ye Guangfu to Tiangong's core module Tianhe, or Harmony of Heavens. They will give us a wonderful space class for the second lime.
Wang is China's second female astronaut to participate in a spaceflight and was a member of the Shenzhou 5 mission in June 2013. She will become the first Chinese woman to enter the Tiangong space station and conduct a spacewalk.
Zhai is the country's first astronaut to take a spacewalk, having done so when he was mission commander during the Shenzhou 7 mission in September 2008. Ye is making his first journey to space.