Shenzhou 16 () was a Chinese spaceflight to the

Tiangong space station Tiangong (), officially the ''Tiangong'' space station (), is a permanently crewed space station constructed by China and operated by China Manned Space Agency. Tiangong is a modular design, with modules docked together while in low Earth o ...

, launched on 30 May 2023. It carried two

People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps The People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps (PLAAC; ), also known as the Chinese Astronaut Corps (), is a Beijing-based deputy-corps grade People's Liberation Army Aerospace Force (PLAASF) and is responsible for the selection and training of ...

(PLAAC) taikonauts and a

payload specialist A payload specialist (PS) was an individual selected and trained by commercial or research organizations for flights of a specific payload on a NASA Space Shuttle mission. People assigned as payload specialists included individuals selected by t ...

from

Beihang University Beihang University (BUAA; formerly as Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics) is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The univers ...

on board a Shenzhou spacecraft. The mission was the eleventh crewed Chinese spaceflight and the sixteenth flight overall of the

Shenzhou program Shenzhou may refer to: * Shenzhou, or "Divine Land", one of the Chinese names of China * Shenzhou program, a crewed spaceflight initiative by the People's Republic of China * Shenzhou (spacecraft), spacecraft from China which first carried a Chi ...

Background

Shenzhou 16 was the fifth spaceflight to the

, with a mission duration of approximately five months. The spacecraft completed construction and testing in December 2022, and prior to launch was maintained in a state of near-readiness if needed as a lifeboat for the

Shenzhou 15 Shenzhou 15 () was a Chinese spaceflight to the Tiangong space station, launched on 29 November 2022. It carried three People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps (PLAAC) taikonauts on board a Shenzhou spacecraft. The mission was the tenth crewed ...

crew.

Mission

The flight launched from

Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (JSLC; also known as Shuangchengzi Missile Test Center; Launch Complex B2; formally Northwest Comprehensive Missile Testing Facility (); Base 20; 63600 Unit) is a Chinese space vehicle launch facility ( spacep ...

on 30 May 2023 at 9:31 AM

China Standard Time The time in China follows a single standard UTC offset, time offset of UTC+08:00, where Beijing is located, even though the country spans five geographical time zones. It is the largest sovereign nation in the world that officially observes only ...

(01:31 UTC), following the launch of the Tianzhou 6 cargo spacecraft and near the end of the

mission. Just under 7 hours after launch, the spacecraft docked with the ''Tianhe'' core module's nadir docking port. Upon entering the station, the crew were greeted by and performed a handover ceremony with the crew of Shenzhou 15, with whom they would share a four-day mission overlap prior to the previous crew's departure on June 3.

Spacewalk

On 20 July 2023, the first scheduled spacewalk of Shenzhou 16 was carried out by Jing Haipeng and Zhu Yangzhu through the airlock of the ''Wentian'' lab module (Zhu Yangzhu being the first Chinese flight engineer to perform a spacewalk), with Gui Haichao assisting the pair from inside the ''Tianhe'' core module. The crew completed a variety of tasks, including the installation and lifting of the support frame for a panoramic camera outside Tiangong's ''Tianhe'' core module and unlocking and lifting two panoramic cameras outside the ''Mengtian'' experiment module. The spacewalk lasted for 7 hours and 55 minutes, beating the previous EVA duration record of 7 hours and 6 minutes on Shenzhou 15.

Return

Shenzhou 16 returned to Earth on October 30, 2023, landing at the Dongfeng landing site in the

Gobi Desert The Gobi Desert (, , ; ) is a large, cold desert and grassland region in North China and southern Mongolia. It is the sixth-largest desert in the world. The name of the desert comes from the Mongolian word ''gobi'', used to refer to all of th ...

Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of China. Its border includes two-thirds of the length of China's China–Mongolia border, border with the country of Mongolia. ...

. Footage of the landing showed an apparent hole in the descent parachute and the capsule tumbling on impact, but the crew was unharmed.

Crew

Shenzhou 16 marked Commander

Jing Haipeng Jing Haipeng (; born 24 October 1966) is a major general of the People's Liberation Army Ground Force (PLAGF) in active service as a vice-commander of the 82nd Group Army. A fighter pilot in the PLA Air Force (PLAAF), he was selected to be ...

's fourth trip to space, a new record for a Chinese taikonaut.

Payload specialist A payload specialist (PS) was an individual selected and trained by commercial or research organizations for flights of a specific payload on a NASA Space Shuttle mission. People assigned as payload specialists included individuals selected by t ...

Gui Haichao Gui Haichao (; born November 1986) is a Chinese aerospace engineer, researcher and professor selected as part of the Shenzhou program. Unlike all earlier taikonauts, Gui is China's first civilian astronaut who is not enlisted in the People's Li ...

, a professor at

, became the first Chinese civilian in space. Gui Haichao and Zhu Yangzhu were also the first members of Chinese Group 3 to fly to space.

References