Pakistan Nears First Crewed Space Mission as Astronaut Selection for Tiangong Nears

Two Pakistani pilots are in the final stages of preparation for a mission that would make Pakistan the latest country to send a citizen into orbit, with a decision on who will fly expected in mid-to-late October.

Zeeshan Ali and Khurram Daud have spent months at the China Astronaut Research and Training Center in Beijing, learning Mandarin, undergoing centrifuge drills and practising the routines of living and working without gravity. The mission was conceived by the two countries in 2019, according to Amer Gilani, who oversees human spaceflight cooperation at Pakistan's space agency, SUPARCO.

The selected pilot will travel to the Tiangong space station this autumn and stay for about a week, becoming the first foreign astronaut aboard the Chinese outpost. The two men were chosen from roughly 20 finalists, themselves narrowed from an initial pool of pilots and scientists screened for medical fitness, psychological resilience and tolerance for the g-forces of launch and re-entry.

Uzair Ansari, SUPARCO's director of artificial intelligence, said the physical demands of spaceflight made pilots the natural choice. "You cannot easily find scientists who are familiar with travelling and facing high-level g-forces," he said.

Once in orbit, the Pakistani astronaut will serve as a payload specialist, operating the country's science experiments rather than piloting the spacecraft. From more than 300 proposals submitted by universities in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, Chinese institutes selected four biotechnology experiments aimed at addressing food insecurity and climate change. Each experiment is built and pre-tested in SUPARCO's laboratories before Chinese engineers approve it.

Ansari described the payload as modest compared with the station's existing output of more than 180 experiments, 500 research papers and 150 patents. Tiangong's three modules — Tianhe, Wentian and Mengtian — weigh about 77 metric tons combined and host roughly 14 experiment racks covering life sciences, materials, fluid physics, combustion and radiation exposure, some mounted outside the station.

The mission will rely entirely on Chinese hardware and expertise: a Chinese-built spacecraft, a Chinese launch site, Chinese instructors and Mandarin as the language of operations. Pakistan has no independent launch vehicle or crewed spacecraft. The astronaut is expected to return alongside two members of a Chinese crew that arrived at the station in May, while the third remains aboard for a year to support long-duration physiology research.

Gilani said the chosen pilot will not return to Pakistan before launch, departing directly from training in China and coming home after a recovery period. Asked whether the partnership included a commitment to send a Pakistani astronaut to the Moon, he said there was no official discussion or commitment, and that future steps would depend on the outcome of the maiden mission.

A separate strand of cooperation involves a Pakistani-built lunar rover scheduled to fly on China's Chang'e 8 mission around 2028. The rover will use AI-based stereo imaging to detect obstacles, judge depth and plan its own path, since controllers on Earth cannot guide it in real time. Ansari called the opportunity "once-in-a-lifetime" for Pakistani scientists.

Since Yuri Gagarin's flight in 1961, citizens of about 50 countries have travelled to space, but only Russia, the United States and China have launched their own crewed spacecraft. China's invitation to Pakistan marks the first time it will carry a foreign astronaut.