A trio of Chinese spacefarers, taikonauts, was launched into space on Tuesday. This Shenzhou 16 crew will stay at the Chinese Tiangong space station for six months.
The crew is led by Jing Haipeng, a veteran, and the two other taikonauts are Zhu Yangzhu and Gui Haichao. Yangzhu is a fighter pilot and military officer, and Haichao is the first civilian Chinese astronaut.
For a day, there will be 17 persons in space at the same time: in addition to these three, there are three Shenzhou 15 taikonauts on the Tiangong station, plus 11 people on the International Space Station (six ISS astronauts from US, Russia and UAE, and the three Axiom-2 tourist mission astronauts from US and Saudi Arabia).
Read more about the Chinese taikonauts and their launch at spaceflightnow.com.