China’s space station to welcome first foreign astronaut, Xinhua says

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BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s space station will welcome its first foreign astronaut in the next few years, state news agency Xinhua reported, after China and Pakistan on Friday signed a cooperation agreement on the selection and training of astronauts.

The agreement to train Pakistani astronauts for missions on the space station points to the growing pull of China’s space diplomacy, buttressed by the advances of its space programme.

As a country with historically close ties to China, Pakistan has in recent years sought to improve its own space capabilities by participating in Chinese initiatives.

Last May, Pakistan was one of several countries that placed payloads aboard the Chang’e-6 lunar probe, which ended up making China the first country to successfully retrieve samples from the moon’s far side.

China and Pakistan will spend roughly a year selecting the Pakistani astronauts, who will be trained in China before joining Chinese counterparts on the Tiangong space station for short-term missions “within the next few years”, Xinhua reported.

Completed in late 2022, Tiangong can house a maximum of three astronauts for months at an orbital altitude of up to 450 km (280 miles). It has a designed operational lifespan of at least 15 years.

(This story has been corrected to say that the selection of astronauts, not the training, will take a year, in paragraph 5)

(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista and Xiuhao Chen; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Ros Russell)