China will launch three astronauts on a spacecraft on Sunday on a six-month mission to complete the construction of the country’s space station currently orbiting the earth, China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced on Saturday.

Astronauts Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe will travel on the Shenzhou-14 spaceflight, which will dock with the Tiangong space station, currently under construction.

The Shenzhou-14 will be launched on Sunday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the northwestern province of Gansu. The mission will build the space station into a national space laboratory, said Lin Xiqiang, the deputy director of the CMSA.

The Shenzhou-14 crew will work with the ground team to complete the rendezvous, docking and transposition of the two lab modules with the core module, Lin said.

They will enter the two lab modules for the first time and help make the environment suitable for their stay, he said, adding that they will unlock and install a dozen of scientific experiment cabinets in the two modules.

This is the second set of six astronauts China will be sending to build its space station.

Earlier, a three-member Chinese astronaut crew returned to the earth in April after spending six months building vital parts of the space station, which was expected to be ready by this year. They had completed the verification of key technologies of its space station. Once ready, China will be the only country to own a space station. Reuters