China launched Shenzhou 13 on October 16, 2021, carrying three astronauts to the Tiangong space station for a six-month stay, the longest Chinese crewed mission flown to that point. Zhai Zhigang commanded it, with Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu aboard. The launch fell exactly 57 years after China's first atomic bomb, and the coincidence was noted by the state media as a measure of how far the country had come.
The crew were the second to live there. Tiangong had been assembled in orbit through 2021, with the core module launched in April and the first crew, Shenzhou 12, staying for three months. Shenzhou 13 was the first full-duration mission, six months, which is the standard tour a crew serves on the station, and it tested the systems for the rotation of crews that would keep the station occupied from then on.
Wang Yaping made the first. She had flown once before, in 2013, and on this flight she became the first Chinese woman to carry out a spacewalk, working outside the station with Zhai. She was also the first woman to serve as the station's commander, on a later mission. Her presence, and the way the state media carried it, was read as part of the programme's message that space is open to the whole population.
The mission set the rhythm. A crewed launch every six months, a handover in orbit, and a permanent presence aboard a station built and run by China alone, is now the pattern. Shenzhou 13 set it. The three astronauts returned to earth in April 2022, and the station has been occupied, with only brief gaps, ever since.