Pakistan closes in on historic Tiangong flight as two pilots await final selection
Two Pakistani pilots training in Beijing will learn next month which one becomes the first foreign astronaut aboard China's Tiangong space station, Pakistan's space agency has told Reuters.
Two Pakistani pilots are memorising Mandarin, spinning in centrifuge drills and learning to eat, sleep and repair equipment while weightless — and next month one of them will be chosen to become the first foreign astronaut aboard China’s Tiangong space station.
Pilots Zeeshan Ali and Khurram Daud have spent months training at the China Astronaut Research and Training Centre in Beijing for a mission conceived by the two countries in 2019, Amer Gilani, who oversees human spaceflight cooperation at Pakistan’s space agency SUPARCO, told Reuters. A final selection decision is expected in mid-to-late October.
The voyage would be a first for the South Asian nation — and the first time China transports a foreign astronaut. Since Yuri Gagarin’s 1961 flight, citizens of about 50 countries have reached space, but only Russia, the United States and China have launched their own crewed spacecraft.
The chosen pilot will fly as a “payload specialist”, running Pakistan’s science experiments during a stay of about a week — a fraction of the six-month rotations of career Chinese crew. The mission relies entirely on Chinese infrastructure: a Chinese-built spacecraft, a Chinese launch site, Chinese instructors, and communication in Mandarin in orbit. Pakistan has no independent launch vehicle or crewed spacecraft of its own.
The two men beat out roughly 20 finalists culled from an initial pool of pilots and scientists, screened for medical fitness, psychological resilience and g-force tolerance — a tolerance “few scientists possess”, SUPARCO’s director of artificial intelligence Uzair Ansari said, explaining why high-speed fliers were chosen.
SUPARCO fielded more than 300 experiment proposals from universities in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad; Chinese institutes picked four biotechnology experiments aimed at combating food insecurity and climate change. Each is built and pre-tested in SUPARCO’s own labs before Chinese engineers sign off. The Pakistani astronaut is due to return with two members of a Chinese crew that arrived at the station in May.
China’s space agency did not respond to a request for comment on the selection process. Asked whether Islamabad had secured any promise of a future moon mission under the partnership, Gilani said “there is no official commitment or discussion on this matter”.
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