China has launched three astronauts to replace the crew on the Chinese Tiangong space station. The Shenzhou 20 spaceship took off as planned atop China’s workhorse Long March 2F rocket at 5:17 p.m. local time (0917 GMT).

China sent three astronauts to its permanently inhabited space station on Thursday, in its 15th crewed spaceflight and the 20th overall in the Shenzhou program that started over three decades ago.The spacecraft Shenzhou-20 and the crew lifted off atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China at 5:17 p.

A Chinese rocket carrying three astronauts to the country’s space station blasted off from its remote launch site on Thursday, the latest milestone in Beijing’s race to become