China launches crewed mission to complete space station construction

Beijing: China on Sunday launched three astronauts on a six-month mission to complete the construction of the country’s space station currently orbiting the earth.

The Shenzhou-14 spacecraft carrying astronauts Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe, was lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China.

The trio will cooperate with the ground team to complete the assembly and construction of the Tiangong space station, developing it from a single-module structure into a national space laboratory with three modules — the core module Tianhe and two lab modules Wentian and Mengtian.