All of China’s latest plans on space

The Shenzhou 13 spacecraft and a Long March 2F Y13 carrier rocket are ready for transfer to the Jiuquan launch site in northern China on Thursday. The launch is scheduled for October 16.

China is expected to send a second crew into orbit next week to continue assembling its Tiangong space station, including a female astronaut, according to SMPC sources.

The mission had been delayed to allow more time to prepare, one of the sources said earlier, and will now take place about a month after the first crew returned to Earth from a 90-day stay aboard the new space station. The next crew of three astronauts will include a woman – 41-year-old Wang Yaping – and they will spend six months in Tiangong.

Wang became the second Chinese woman in space as part of the Shenzhou 10 crew in 2013. She gave a video lecture on physics from the Tiangong 1 space laboratory which was broadcast live on television.

This time, the crew will examine how sustainable the space station technology is for long stays, conduct more spacewalks – the previous crew completed two – to test the robotic arm and their spacesuits and conduct scientific experiments.

Two more laboratory modules are expected to be sent to the station this year so that astronauts can conduct more experiments in areas such as space medicine and biotechnology. China aims to complete construction of the space station next year, with two more cargo missions and two more manned missions scheduled for 2022 to make it fully functional.

By that time, the Tiangong will be about a quarter the size of the International Space Station, which was built by a coalition of 16 countries. Tiangong is likely to be the only operational space station in near-Earth orbit by the end of the decade .