– China will send an astronaut to its space station on Sunday for a year, a record length for the country, ​enabling the study of long-duration human physiology in space as Beijing works towards its ambition of a crewed moon landing by 2030.

The Shenzhou-23 vessel is scheduled ‌to launch at 11:08 p.m. (1508 GMT) using the Long March-2F Y23 carrier rocket from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, with three Chinese astronauts on board.
Payload specialist Li Jiaying, a former Hong Kong police inspector, will be the first astronaut from the city to take part in a Chinese space mission. The other crew members are commander Zhu Yangzhu and pilot Zhang Yuanzhi, both from the People’s Liberation ​Army’s astronaut division.One of the three is to stay on the Tiangong space station for a year, one of the longest ​space missions ever but short of the 14-1/2 month record set by a Russian cosmonaut in 1995. That astronaut will be decided later, ⁠depending on the progress of the mission, the China Manned Space Agency said on Saturday.

China has sent astronauts to its space station almost a dozen times, but this launch ​comes amid an accelerating race to the moon with the U.S., which has warned about what it alleges are Beijing’s plans to colonise and mine lunar territory and resources.