The spacecraft Shenzhou-17, or 'Divine Vessel', and its three passengers lifted off atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China.
The SpaceX launch vehicle, consisting of a Falcon 9 rocket topped with an autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule called Endeavour, lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Astronauts landed on space station Tiangong, considered crown jewel in Beijing's 30-year-old crewed space programme, Sunday. Assembly likely to be completed by 2022-end.
Last week, China released a new, high-definition image of Tiangong, an under-construction orbiter started after US barred Beijing from participating in the International Space Station.
People are shooting for the stars, but those who declined to fund the expansive plans of the nascent space mining industry were right about the fundamentals.
This is the game every nation is now learning to play. Some are finding new allies or seeing value among nations where they’d seen marginal interest. The starkest example is India & Europe.
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