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Added on the 17/10/2016 11:31:32 - Copyright : Reuters EN
China sends a fresh crew to its Tiangong space station in the latest mission for a growing space programme that plans to send people to the Moon by 2030. The Shenzhou-17 blasted off from the Jiuquan launch site in arid northwest China at 11:14 am (0314 GMT) Thursday, carrying a three-astronaut team with the youngest average age since the space station's construction. IMAGES
The Shenzhou-16 crew takes off atop a Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China. IMAGES
A rocket carrying the Chang'e-6 lunar probe blasts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in southern China's Hainan province. The Chang'e-6 seeks to collect samples from the far side of the Moon, a world first as Beijing pushes ahead with an ambitious programme that aims to send a crewed lunar mission by 2030. IMAGES
China's Shenzhou-18 mission takes off from a launch centre in Jiuquan, in the northern Gansu province, carrying three astronauts to the country's Tiangong space station. The three are set to replace the space station's current crew and will remain in orbit around the Earth for six months. IMAGES
A NASA spacecraft blasts off from the Kennedy Space Center bound for Psyche, a metal-rich asteroid that could be the remnants of a small planet, or perhaps a new type of celestial body unknown to science. Trailing a blue glow from its next-generation electric propulsion system and flanked by two large solar arrays, the van-sized probe should arrive at its destination in the Asteroid Belt, between Mars and Jupiter, in July 2029. IMAGES
US NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara and Russian Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, members of the International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 70-71 main crew, bid farewell to their relatives and visitors gathered ahead of the launch from the Russian leased Baikonur facility, in Kazakhstan. IMAGES