Shenzhou Programme

The Shenzhou programme is China's crewed spaceflight initiative, managed by the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). It has made China the third country to independently launch humans into orbit, after Russia and the United States. The programme uses the Shenzhou spacecraft — a three-module vehicle loosely based on Russia's Soyuz design but significantly larger — launched on Long March 2F rockets from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert.

The first crewed mission, Shenzhou 5, launched on 15 October 2003 carrying Yang Liwei, who became China's first taikonaut (astronaut). Since then, the programme has conducted increasingly ambitious missions: the first Chinese EVA (Shenzhou 7, 2008), rendezvous and docking with the Tiangong-1 test lab (Shenzhou 8–10), 30-day missions aboard Tiangong-2 (Shenzhou 11), and routine crew rotations on the permanent Tiangong space station (Shenzhou 12 onwards).

As of 2026, China maintains a continuous three-person crew aboard Tiangong, with Shenzhou missions launching approximately every six months for crew rotation. The Shenzhou spacecraft can carry three taikonauts and remains docked to the station for the duration of each crew's approximately six-month stay.