China launched the Shenzhou-23 crewed spaceship on Sunday, May 24, 2026, sending three astronauts toward the orbiting Tiangong space station. The spacecraft lifted off atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, state news agency Xinhua reported.
A history-making crew
The Shenzhou-23 crew is led by mission commander Zhu Yangzhu, a flight engineer who previously flew on the Shenzhou-16 mission. He is joined by spacecraft pilot Zhang Zhiyuan, a former air force pilot from China's third batch of astronauts, and payload specialist Li Jiaying — known in Cantonese as Lai Ka-ying — who comes from the fourth batch. For both Zhang and Li, this is a first spaceflight.
Li, who previously worked in the Hong Kong Police Force, has made history as the first astronaut from China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to travel to space. She is also the country's fourth female astronaut to reach orbit, following Liu Yang, Wang Yaping and Wang Haoze.
Joining the Tiangong station
Once docked, the Shenzhou-23 crew is expected to carry out an in-orbit handover with the resident Shenzhou-21 astronauts before settling into a months-long stay aboard Tiangong. State media said the mission's planned work includes space science and application experiments, extravehicular activities, cargo transfers, the installation of debris-protection devices, and the deployment and retrieval of external payloads, alongside science-education and public-welfare activities.
According to reporting from Space.com, the rotation will also relieve a resident crew that has spent longer in orbit than originally scheduled, and the mission is expected to include one of China's longest single spaceflights to date.
Part of a steady cadence of launches
The flight continues China's regular tempo of crewed and robotic missions and adds to a busy global launch calendar. Recent activity tracked by The Robotics Media includes Rocket Lab's latest Synspective radar-satellite launch and SpaceX's preparations for Starship Version 3. The commercial side of the sector has been equally active, underscored by SpaceX's record IPO filing.
Why it matters
The Shenzhou-23 launch reinforces China's push to keep Tiangong permanently crewed and to broaden the pool of people who fly to it. Adding the first Hong Kong astronaut, and a fourth woman to the roster, signals both a widening recruitment base and the station's growing role as a long-duration research platform in low Earth orbit.
Reporting based on coverage from Xinhua and Space.com.