Two Chinese astronauts were sent in a mission on space on Monday. They left Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The astronauts will stay 30 days on the experimental space station Tiangong 2.
Experiments related with space technologies, medicine and more will take place. This is the sixth time that China sent astronauts into space and the duration of this mission will be the longest so far.
Important government officials such as Premier Li Keqiang and Liu Yunshan, propaganda chief, congratulated the team behind this space flight.
The completed station will be completely ready in 2022 and it´ll run for at least ten years. The chinese space program advances very fast.
A previous experimental space station, Tiangong 1, was launched five years ago but it went out of service last March. The Tiangong stations are seen as key to the development of a future mission whose purpose is conquer Mars by the end of the decade. The success of these missions are extremely important to achieve that goal.
The Chinese astronauts are Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong.
"It is any astronaut's dream and pursuit to be able to perform many space missions," said Jing.
After Russia and the United States, China became the third country to send a crewed space mission in space. Its first mission happened in 2003.
China was blocked from participating in the International Space Station because United States suspected that it could have military ambitions. Now, China wants to popularize its own program by helping financially those countries that want to send missions to Tiangong 2.
While Russia and USA have more experience in manned space travel, the Chinese program has made great advances in a very short time.
