China has launched its Shenzhou-21 mission, sending a three-member crew — including the nation’s youngest astronaut to date — to the Tiangong (“Heavenly Palace”) space station, state media reported Friday.
The crew blasted off atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China, marking the seventh crewed mission to the permanently inhabited station since its completion in 2022.
The new team will spend six months aboard Tiangong, taking over duties from the Shenzhou-20 astronauts, who are expected to return to Earth in the coming days.
The mission’s commander, Zhang Lu, 48, previously flew on Shenzhou-15, while first-time astronauts Zhang Hongzhang, 39, and Wu Fei, 32 — China’s youngest astronaut ever to fly — complete the trio.
Joining them are four black mice, the first small mammals taken to the Chinese space station. They will be used in biological experiments to study reproduction in low Earth orbit, part of China’s broader push into space-based life sciences.
Biannual launches have now become standard for the Shenzhou program, which in recent years has achieved major milestones — including the first crewed missions by astronauts born in the 1990s, record-breaking spacewalks, and plans to send Pakistan’s first astronaut to Tiangong in 2026.
China’s rapid expansion in space exploration has drawn increasing attention from Washington, where NASA is racing to return American astronauts to the Moon before Beijing does. Both powers are also establishing rival frameworks for lunar exploration — the U.S.-led Artemis Accords and the China–Russia International Lunar Research Station initiative.