China to send 3 astronauts to space station

The Long March 2F rocket to be used in the mission will start to pump propellants into its fuel tanks on Wednesday morning, he said.

Tianhe was lifted by a Long March 5B heavy-lift rocket at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province on April 29. The largest and heaviest spacecraft China has ever built, the module is the first part of the Chinese space station, named Tiangong, or Heavenly Palace.

The module is now connected with the Tianzhou 2 robotic cargo ship that was launched by a Long March 7 rocket from the Wenchang facility on May 29. The two crafts docked with each other the next day.

By now, all pre-launch preparations have been completed and the Tianhe-Tianzhou 2 combination is ready for the astronauts' arrival, Ji said.

Hao Chun, director of the manned space agency, told China Daily in April that the Tianzhou 3 cargo ship will be launched from Wenchang in September to dock with Tianhe. The next month, another three-astronaut team will fly to the core module on Shenzhou XIII to work there for six months.