Three Chinese astronauts, including the country's only woman spaceflight engineer, entered the Tiangong space station Wednesday morning following an early morning launch into orbit. The Shenzhou-19 mission took off with its trio of space explorers from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China,

China launched its first crewed mission in 2003, becoming only the third nation to do so after the former Soviet Union and the United States. The space program is a source of enormous national pride and a hallmark of China’s technological advances over the past two decades.