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The Long March 2F rocket departed from the Gobi Desert on May 24, 2026, with the Shenzhou-23 mission. The Chinese space agency has not yet decided which crew member will stay the 12 months aboard the Chinese space station, and an astrophysicist consulted by AFP warns of bone loss, radiation, and psychological fatigue.
The launch took place on Sunday, May 24, 2026, at 11:08 PM Beijing time, 12:08 PM in Brasília, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, northwest China. According to an official announcement by the China Manned Space Agency, CMSA, released by the state agency Xinhua, the Long March 2F rocket carried the Shenzhou-23 spacecraft with three astronauts to the Chinese space station Tiangong, where the crew docked on the same day for a historic stay: for the first time, a member will remain 12 consecutive months in orbit.
The mission exists because China needs to understand what an entire year in space does to the human body before attempting more ambitious flights. According to the CMSA, cited by Xinhua, the extended stay will fuel China’s first human organism research program conducted in orbit, a stage considered strategic for the declared plan of Beijing to land astronauts on the Moon by 2030, a goal that remains an announced schedule by the government and not an accomplished fact.
Who are the three crew members and why the chosen one for the year in orbit still has no name
Alongside him are pilot Zhang Zhiyuan, also 39 years old and a former Chinese Air Force pilot, and payload specialist Lai Ka-ying, 43 years old, also identified by Chinese authorities as Li Jiaying in the Mandarin transliteration.
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According to the Associated Press agency, Lai was born and raised in Hong Kong, worked in the territory’s police, and became the city’s first astronaut to go to space.
The name of who will stay for the 12 months will only be defined during the mission itself.
The CMSA spokesperson, Zhang Jingbo, stated in a press conference reproduced by Xinhua that the choice will depend on the progress of work in orbit.
The specialized site Space.com noted that, according to the Chinese agency itself, the pilot and the payload specialist were trained to perform each other’s functions, which suggests that one of the two newcomers should be selected for the record stay on the Chinese space station.
What China wants to discover with a year straight on the Chinese space station
The crew will conduct more than 100 new science and application projects aboard the Tiangong, according to the official announcement released by Xinhua.
The fronts include space life science, materials science, fluid physics in microgravity, aerospace medicine, and new space technologies.
The central point, however, is the unprecedented human body research program, which aims to build what spokesperson Zhang Jingbo described as a multisystem atlas of the organism exposed to long-duration spaceflight.
The spokesperson himself made a point of separating the mission from a simple sum of two six-month stays.
According to Zhang Jingbo, cited by Xinhua, assigning an astronaut for a year in orbit truly tests the capacity of the Chinese space station’s health support systems, which has been continuously occupied since June 2022, according to the specialized site NASASpaceflight.
So far, Chinese teams have taken turns on the Tiangong in shifts of about six months, as recorded by the agency France Presse.
The risks of the human body in prolonged orbit and the record that still belongs to Russia
A year in microgravity takes a known toll on space medicine.
Astrophysicist Richard de Grijs, professor at Macquarie University in Australia, told the agency France Presse that the main challenges will be the effects on humans: loss of bone density, muscle atrophy, radiation exposure, sleep disorders, and behavioral and psychological fatigue.
The researcher also highlighted that the reliability of water and air recycling systems and the management of medical emergencies far from Earth enter a different operational regime when the mission doubles in duration.
Even completing the 12 months, the Chinese crew member will not break the world record for continuous stay in space.
The record belongs to Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 consecutive days aboard the Mir station between 1994 and 1995.
The current Chinese record is much more modest: the previous crew of the Shenzhou-21 returned to Earth on May 28, 2026, after almost seven months in orbit, the longest stay by a Chinese team so far, according to the Associated Press.
Lunar race with the United States and the next steps of the Chinese program
The Shenzhou-23 fits into the direct competition between Beijing and Washington for the return of humans to the Moon.
NASA is working with the goal of landing astronauts on the lunar surface in 2028 with the Artemis program, two years ahead of the Chinese schedule, according to the Associated Press.
China, which was excluded from the International Space Station due to restrictions imposed by the United States under the argument of national security, responded by building its own Chinese space station, now the showcase of its manned program.
The next milestones already have an announced schedule, and all should be read as plans, not as achievements.
Still in 2026, China intends to conduct the test flight of the Mengzhou spacecraft, designed to take astronauts to the Moon instead of the Shenzhou, according to the agency France Presse.
By the end of the year, Tiangong is expected to receive its first foreign astronaut, a Pakistani, and by 2035 Beijing plans to erect the first phase of a manned scientific base on the Moon, the International Lunar Research Station, a project known by the acronym ILRS.
A year in orbit to shorten the path to the Moon
The 12-month experiment on the Chinese space station is, at its core, a dress rehearsal for journeys where there will be no quick return possible.
If the data from the human body atlas confirm that Tiangong’s systems sustain an astronaut for a year safely, China gains a powerful technical argument in the lunar race and, further ahead, in the declared ambition to reach Mars.
And you, do you believe that China can land astronauts on the Moon before the United States returns there? Leave your opinion in the comments and join the conversation, always with respect for different opinions.
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