China has sent its youngest crew of “taikonauts” (the Chinese word for astronauts) on a six-month mission to the Tiangong space station. Tiangong is a space station owned by China that orbits Earth.
The three-person crew was launched into space on 30 October on a spaceship called Shenzhou 19. This is China’s 14th crewed space mission. The mission commander, Cai Xuzhe, has been to the space station once before in 2022. His crew members, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze, were both born in 1990 and have never been to space before. Haoze is also China’s first female space engineer. Before they took off, Xuzhe said his crew’s “youthful energy” made him feel “younger and even more confident”. While they are on board the space station, the new crew will carry…