A “Long March” rocket with a Shenzhou-19 spacecraft on top lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, northwest China, in the early hours of Wednesday, October 30, 2024.

Ng Han Guan/AP/AP

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Ng Han Guan/AP/AP

JIUQUAN, China – China declared a “complete success” after sending a new three-member crew to its orbiting space station early Wednesday, as the country seeks to expand its space exploration with missions to the moon and beyond.

The Shenzhou-19 spacecraft carrying the trio lifted off at 4:27 a.m. local time from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China aboard a Long March-2F rocket, the backbone of China's manned space missions.

“The condition of the crew is good and the launch was successful,” state broadcaster China Central Television said.

China built its own space station after being excluded from the International Space Station, largely due to U.S. concerns about the People's Liberation Army, the military arm of the Chinese Communist Party, which has overall control of the space program. China's lunar program is part of a growing rivalry with the United States and others including Japan and India.

The team of two men and one woman will replace the astronauts who have been living on the Tiangong space station for six months. They are expected to stay until April or May next year.

The new mission commander Cai

Song was an air force pilot and Wang was an engineer at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. Wang will be the crew's payload specialist and the third Chinese woman aboard a manned mission.

The Chinese space agency has not only put a space station into orbit, but also landed an explorer on Mars. The goal is to put a man on the moon before 2030, which would make China the second country after the United States to achieve this. The company is also planning to build a research station on the moon and has already transferred rock and soil samples from the little-explored far side of the moon for the first time in the world.

The US is still a leader in space exploration and plans to land astronauts on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, although NASA pushed back the target date to 2026 earlier this year.

The new crew will conduct spacewalks and install new equipment to protect the station from space debris, some of which was created by China.

According to NASA, large pieces of debris were created by “satellite explosions and collisions.” China's launch of a missile to destroy a redundant weather satellite in 2007 and the “accidental collision of American and Russian communications satellites in 2009 have significantly increased the amount of large debris in orbit,” it said.

China's space agencies say they have taken measures in case their astronauts need to return to Earth early.

China launched its first manned mission in 2003, becoming only the third country to do so after the former Soviet Union and the United States. The space program is a source of enormous national pride and a hallmark of China's technological advances over the past two decades.