Sawt Falasteen - Veteran Chinese astronaut to lead fresh crew to space station

The Shenzhou-20 mission is scheduled to blast off at 5:17 pm Thursday (0917 GMT) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, Lin Xiqiang, deputy director of the China Manned Space Agency, announced at a news conference.

At the helm will be Chen Dong, a 46-year-old former fighter pilot and experienced space explorer who in 2022 became the first Chinese astronaut to stay in orbit for more than 200 days.

Joining Chen will be two other male astronauts, Chen Zhongrui, a former air force pilot in his early forties, and Wang Jie, a 35-year-old former space technology engineer.

Both will be embarking on their first space flight, he said.

The crew currently aboard the Tiangong space station is scheduled to return to Earth on April 29 after completing handover procedures with the incoming astronauts, Lin added.

China's space programme, the third to put humans in orbit, has also landed robotic rovers on Mars and the Moon.

The Tiangong space station -- crewed by teams of three astronauts that are exchanged every six months -- is the crown jewel of the country's space programme.

China has ramped up plans to achieve its "space dream" under President Xi Jinping.

Beijing says it aims to send a crewed mission to the Moon by 2030, where it intends to construct a base on the lunar surface.

O.Salim--SF-PST