A Pakistani astronaut will fly on China's Shenzhou 24 mission and become the first international visitor to the Tiangong space station, spending about a week in orbit.
A Pakistani astronaut is set to launch on China's Shenzhou 24 mission in the coming weeks and become the first-ever international visitor to the Tiangong space station, according to Space.com.
The astronaut will fly as a payload specialist on Shenzhou 24 along with two Chinese colleagues. The other of the two Pakistani candidates will serve as a backup. The chosen candidate will spend roughly a week in orbit aboard Tiangong during a standard crew rotation period and return to Earth aboard the departing Shenzhou 23 spacecraft, along with two Chinese astronauts who will have completed a six-month stay in orbit.
The two Pakistani astronaut candidates, named in Pakistani press reports as Muhammad Zeeshan Ali and Khurram Daud, are both pilots from the country's military forces. They were chosen from a wider pool of around 20 finalists and have been training at the Astronaut Centre of China in Beijing.
"China and Pakistan are all-weather strategic cooperative partners," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Nov. 9. "Having the Pakistani astronaut on board China's spaceships will mark the first-ever joint mission of Chinese and foreign astronauts in the history of China's manned space program."
During his stay in space, the Pakistani astronaut will be responsible for four research payloads selected from more than 300 proposals, according to Pakistan's space agency, SUPARCO.
China has not announced a timeline for the launch of the Shenzhou 24 mission, but it is expected to lift off before the end of November. Shenzhou 24 will launch from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert on a Long March 2F rocket. The identities of the crew will only be revealed in a press conference a day ahead of launch.
The mission marks the first joint mission of Chinese and foreign astronauts in the history of China's manned space program. It also means changes to China's usual "three in, three out" Tiangong crew rotations, as one of the three Shenzhou 23 astronauts will stay aboard and complete China's first-ever year-long stay in orbit, while the Pakistani astronaut takes their seat aboard Shenzhou 23 to return home.
Sources
This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.
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