First foreign astronaut to board Chinese space station
A Pakistani astronaut will join the Shenzhou-24 crewed flight mission as a payload specialist, the China Manned Space Agency said on Saturday.
After completing a short on-orbit flight, the Pakistani astronaut will return to Earth aboard the Shenzhou-23 spacecraft.
With China’s space station set to receive the first foreign visitor, the mission will mark the first joint flight involving Chinese and foreign astronauts in the history of the country’s manned space program.
In February 2025, China and Pakistan signed a cooperation agreement on astronaut selection, training, and participation in Chinese space station flight missions in Islamabad, officially launching astronaut selection from Pakistan.
After a rigorous three-stage selection and assessment process, two Pakistani reserve astronauts were selected. After completing all training and passing the evaluation in China, one will carry out the crewed flight mission while the other will serve as a backup.
Reference Link:- https://english.news.cn/20261107/e08eee855a7543429e6de6df60599922/c.html
Zamir Ahmed Awan is the founder and Chair of the Global Silk Route Research Alliance, a think tank in Islamabad. He studied engineering at Shanghai University in the 1980s, and years later he went back to China as Pakistan's science counsellor in Beijing, from 2010 until 2016, working on science and higher education cooperation between the two countries.…
