3 astronauts dock on Tiangong space station to replace crew

The crew will work on Tiangong for 6 months, carrying out experiments in physics and life sciences; China plans for crewed Moon landing grow nearer; Beijing to lend Moon rocks to Nasa-funded US universities

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A spaceship carrying three astronauts docked on Thursday with China’s space station in the latest crew rotation, marking a further step in the country’s ambitions for a crewed mission to the Moon and explore Mars.

Beijing has pumped billions of dollars into its space programme in recent years in an effort to achieve what President Xi Jinping describes as the Chinese people's “space dream.”

The world’s second-largest economy has bold plans to send a crewed mission to the Moon by the end of the decade and eventually build a base on the lunar surface.

Thursday’s launch of the Shenzhou-20 mission is intended to ferry a team of three astronauts to China’s Tiangong space station.

The Shenzhou 20 spaceship took off as planned atop China's workhorse Long March 2F rocket at 5:17pm local time (0917 GMT). It reached the Tiangong space station about 6.5 hours later, according to the China Manned Space Agency.

The rocket lifted off from the launch center in Jiuquan, on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northwestern China. The spaceship will remain in space before returning with the current three-person crew.