Chinese space station to welcome first foreign astronaut

A Pakistani national will become the first foreign astronaut to visit China’s Tiangong space station, Beijing has said.

He will join the crew of the Shenzhou-24 mission, which blasts off for the station on November 25, as a payload specialist, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced on Saturday.

The Pakistani astronaut’s stay in orbit will be a rather short one, as he is scheduled to return to Earth aboard the Shenzhou-23 spacecraft, it said. The mission is expected to conclude on November 30.

Two Pakistani representatives – Khurram Daud and Muhammad Zeeshan Ali – were selected to undergo training in China after a three-stage selection and assessment process. CMSA did not say which would travel to Tiangong and who will serve as a backup.

So far, only Chinese taikonauts have worked at the station, which began operating in low orbit in 2021.

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After Beijing and Islamabad signed a cooperation agreement on a manned space flight in February 2025, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif hailed the development as

“a defining moment in the nation’s space journey, emphasizing that it will be remembered as a cornerstone of Pakistan’s aspiration in human spaceflight.”

CMSA chief Lin Xiqiang said that

“Pakistan’s participation in the China Space Station program reflects the deep-rooted ties between the two countries and will contribute to mutual knowledge-sharing and the broader vision of peaceful space exploration for the benefit of humanity.”

Shenzhou-24 will mark only the second-ever Pakistani national going to space. The pioneer was Namira Salim, who experienced several minutes of weightlessness as part of a

“suborbital”

flight with the Virgin Galactic space tourism company in 2023.

Last week, China laid out a roadmap for a manned lunar program consisting of four missions and culminating in a crewed touchdown on the Moon

“before 2030.”

Several years ago, Moscow and Beijing announced a joint International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) project, with Russia seeking to build a power station on Earth’s only natural satellite to provide energy for a base within the next decade.

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In April, the head of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, Dmitry Bakanov, said that the country’s Academy of Sciences had approved the concept for establishing the Russian segment of the lunar base. At the same time, Moscow is developing its own tools to scan the Moon and study its structure, he added.