Beijing. June 16. INTERFAX-China plans to send a crew of three astronauts to the space station under construction on June 17, Ji Qiming, a representative of the Chinese Manned Flight Program, told reporters.
According to him, the launch of the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft is scheduled for Thursday at 09:22 am local time (04:22 Moscow time) from the Jiuquan cosmodrome in the northwestern Chinese province of Gansu.
The crew includes Nie Haisheng, Tang Hongbo, who has already been in space, as well as Liu Boming, for whom the flight will be the first.
The tasks of the astronauts will be the assembly and connection of equipment delivered to the station module by cargo ships.
The basic module of the future Chinese space station was launched in April this year, in total, it will take 11 launches and a little more than a year to complete its construction.
It is planned that two laboratory modules will be put into orbit, which will be docked to the base module, and four cargo and four manned spacecraft will be launched.