Shenzhou 23 crew to Tiangong & Hong Kong’s first astronaut milestone - Space News (May 24, 2026)

China is set for another crew rotation to the Tiangong space station, with the China Manned Space Agency naming the Shenzhou 23 crew: Zhu Yangzhu, Zhang Zhiyuan, and Lai Ka-ying. The mission is slated to launch on a Long March 2F from Jiuquan, with a reported liftoff time of 15:08 UTC on May 24. Once in orbit, Shenzhou 23 will rendezvous and dock with Tiangong for a planned stay of about six months, reinforcing how China’s station has moved from assembly to steady, repeatable operations.

One of the most notable elements of Shenzhou 23 is the crew makeup and what it signals about long-duration ambitions. Lai Ka-ying is expected to become the first astronaut from Hong Kong to fly, serving as a payload specialist—an attention-grabbing milestone that expands the program’s social footprint as well as its technical one. At the same time, reporting around this rotation suggests the mission architecture may support China’s first year-long stint in orbit by having one astronaut overlap across consecutive crews, a step that matters for learning how the human body and mind hold up during extended time in microgravity.

On the science side, a new theoretical analysis is challenging the default mental picture many of us carry for planets: neat layers, with a core, a mantle, and an atmosphere on top. The study argues that for many sub-Neptunes—planets larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune—extreme internal pressures and temperatures could make hydrogen, silicates, and iron fully mix, producing a planet without distinct internal layers. If that’s right, it could change expectations for how these worlds cool, how they transport heat, and whether they can generate Earth-like magnetic fields—especially striking given that sub-Neptunes appear to be among the most common planets found in Kepler and TESS-era surveys.

A more visual, almost cinematic update comes from Mars: NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day spotlights a video captured by the Perseverance rover showing Phobos, Mars’s small and irregular moon, crossing the face of the Sun. Because Phobos is tiny and close to Mars, it doesn’t create the dramatic, minutes-long totality we see on Earth; instead, it’s a quick transit with a noticeably lumpy silhouette. Beyond the wow factor, repeated timing of these events helps refine Phobos’s orbit and contributes to the broader effort to understand the Mars–moon system over time.

And finally, a couple of items for your own evening checklist. Late May 2026 features a “blue moon” in the popular sense: the second full moon in a single calendar month, arriving May 30–31 depending on your location, and it’s also described as a micromoon because it’s near the Moon’s farthest point from Earth. Looking slightly ahead, Venus and Jupiter are closing in on a bright conjunction in early June, with their closest pairing around June 8–9—an easy naked-eye view low in the west after sunset, and a great reminder that the solar system’s clockwork is always putting on a show if you know when to look.