China launches 3 astronauts to complete space station

BEIJING (AP) — China launched a rocket Tuesday carrying three astronauts to complete construction of the country's permanent orbiting space station, during which they will expand the facility to its maximum capacity of six crew aboard.

The crew of the Shenzhou-15 will overlap for several days with the existing 3-member crew of the Tiangong station, who will then return to Earth after their six-month mission.

Their spaceship blasted off atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert at 11:08 p.m. Tuesday.

The six-month mission, commanded by Fei Junlong and crewed by Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu, will be the last in the station's construction phase, according to the China Manned Space Agency.

Fei, 57, is a veteran of the 2005 four-day Shenzhou-6 mission, the second time China sent a human into space. Deng and Zhang are making their first space flights.

The station’s third and final module docked with the station earlier this month, one of the last steps in China’s more than decade-long effort to maintain a constant crewed presence in orbit.

After the Shenzhou-15 spaceship makes an automated docking with the Tianhe core living and control module’s front port, the station will be expanded to its maximum size, with three modules and three spacecraft attached for a total mass of nearly 100 tons.

Tiangong has room to accommodate six astronauts at a time and the handover will take about a week. That would mark the station’s first in-orbit crew rotation.

Previous missions to the space station have taken about 13 hours from liftoff to docking.

China has not yet said what further work is needed to complete the station. Next year, it plans to launch the Xuntian space telescope, which, while not part of Tiangong, will...