China Launches Shenzhou 23 with Three Astronauts, One Set for Year in Space

China just sent three astronauts to space — and one of them isn't coming back for a very long time. On Sunday night, May 24, China launched the Shenzhou 23 spacecraft from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, kicking off one of its most ambitious crewed missions yet.

The crew includes commander Zhu Yangzhu, Zhang Zhiyuan, and Lai Ka-ying — and that last name is one worth paying attention to. Lai, who goes by Li Jiaying in Mandarin, was born and raised in Hong Kong and holds a doctoral degree in computer forensics. She's the first astronaut from Hong Kong ever to fly a space mission. Hong Kong's Chief Executive called it a "historic moment" for the city.

Once they dock at China's Tiangong space station — which translates to "Heavenly Palace" and first hosted a crew back in 2021 — the three will overlap briefly with the current crew of Shenzhou 21, who have already been up there for over 200 days, before that group heads home.

Here's the really jaw-dropping part: one of the three Shenzhou 23 astronauts is scheduled to stay at the station for a full year. The goal? To study how the human body adapts to long stretches in microgravity — the kind of research that's critical if you're ever going to send people to the Moon or Mars and actually expect them to function when they get there. A yearlong solo stay would rank among the longest individual stints in space in history.

And that moon goal isn't just talk. This launch comes directly in the context of China's push to pull off its first crewed lunar landing by 2030. NASA, for its part, is aiming to put astronauts back on the lunar surface in 2028 — so there's a very real race happening here, whether either side officially calls it that or not.

China built Tiangong on its own after being excluded from the International Space Station, largely because of U.S. concerns about the Chinese space program's close ties to the People's Liberation Army. That rift hasn't healed — U.S. law still bans NASA from using government funds to cooperate with China. So while both countries are technically exploring the same universe, they're doing it in very separate orbits.

All told, this mission is a signal — of scientific ambition, of geopolitical muscle-flexing, and of a space program that keeps getting bigger, bolder, and harder to ignore.