China sends its youngest astronaut and space mice into orbit
China's Shenzhou-21 spaceship launched Friday, carrying its youngest astronaut and small mammals to the space station.
The Tiangong space station, crewed by rotating teams of three astronauts, is the centerpiece of China's multibillion-dollar space program, News.Az reports citing foreign media.
Beijing aims to send astronauts to the moon by the decade's end and eventually build a lunar base, in a bid to rival the US and Russian space programs.
Mice and men, to space
The latest crew to Tiangong consists of first-time astronauts Zhang Hongzhang and Wu Fei, who, at 32, is China's youngest astronaut to be sent to space. They are led by Commander Zhang Lu, who spent time in space two years ago.
Also onboard the spacecraft are four mice, the first time China is sending the small mammals to the space station.
They will be monitored to study how weightlessness and confinement affect their behavioral patterns.
The "space mice" were selected from 300 candidates after more than 60 days of intensive training, according to China's official Xinhua News Agency.
The astronauts plan to conduct 27 experiments in fields such as biotechnology, space medicine and materials science.
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