China unveils Shenzhou-16 crew for space station mission

Chinese taikonauts Jing Haipeng, Zhu Yangzhu, and Gui Haichao will carry out the Shenzhou-16 spaceflight mission, and Jing will be the commander, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced at a press conference on Monday.

Jing will become the country's first taikonaut to go into space for a fourth time. He was involved in the Shenzhou-7 mission in 2008 and commanded the Shenzhou-9 and Shenzhou-11 crews in 2012 and 2016, respectively.

Zhu and Gui are going to make their first trip to space. They are members of China's third batch of taikonauts, whose selection was completed by September 2020.

Zhu will serve as a spaceflight engineer in the Shenzhou-16 mission. Gui is a professor from Beijing-based Beihang University, and he will work as a payload expert responsible for the in-orbit operations of science experiment payloads in the country's Tiangong space station.

The Shenzhou-16 crewed spaceship will be launched at 9:31 a.m. Tuesday (Beijing Time) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, said Lin Xiqiang, deputy director of the CMSA.

The Shenzhou-16 will be the first crew mission after China's space station program entered the stage of application and development.

The trio of taikonauts will stay in orbit for about five months, Lin said at the conference.