China Launches Shenzhou 23 — One Astronaut to Stay in Space for a Full Year

China just sent three astronauts to space — and at least one of them won't be coming back for a very long time.

China launched the Shenzhou 23 spacecraft Sunday night with three astronauts heading to its space station, including one set to stay in space for a year. The spacecraft blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China.

The crew includes some notable names. The astronauts are Zhu Yangzhu (the commander), Zhang Zhiyuan, and Lai Ka-ying — who was born and raised in Hong Kong, holds a doctoral degree in computer forensics, and is the first astronaut from the city to go on a space mission. That's a big deal symbolically for Hong Kong, which hasn't historically been front-and-center in China's space narrative.

Now here's the part that should catch your attention: one of the three astronauts is scheduled to stay at the orbiting space station for a year, in what would be among the world's longest single stays in space. To put that in perspective, the longest single mission by a Chinese astronaut before this was 204 days, and the world record overall is 437 days, held by Russian astronaut Valeri Polyakov. So this would comfortably double China's previous best.

The specific astronaut who will remain aboard for the year hasn't been decided yet — the selection will be determined later in the mission based on physical and psychological evaluations. That's a pretty fascinating (and slightly nerve-wracking) detail: imagine training for a mission not knowing if you're the one staying for 12 months.

Why does a year in space even matter? The astronaut's mission is to "explore human adaptability and performance limits" in long-duration spaceflight environments. During the year-long mission, China is starting its first human body research programme, which will collect health data from the astronaut to prepare for future missions that will go further in space. Think of it as stress-testing the human body before committing to something like a Mars mission.

The timing of all this is no coincidence. The much-anticipated launch comes as China prepares for its first crewed lunar landing by 2030. China's astronauts have carried out multiple missions to the Tiangong space station, which was developed after China was effectively excluded from the International Space Station on U.S. concerns over national security. In other words, China built its own space club — and it's now running serious experiments in it.

The crew is set to conduct dozens of science and application projects, and they're also expected to complete an in-orbit rotation with the crew of Shenzhou 21, who has already been at Tiangong for more than 200 days.

There's also a forward-looking twist: this arrangement would allow a Pakistani astronaut to visit Tiangong during the Shenzhou 24 mission scheduled for October 2026 — signaling China is increasingly using its space station as a diplomatic and geopolitical tool, welcoming international partners that the U.S.-led ISS program has historically shut out.