China launched the Shenzhou-20 crewed spaceship on Thursday, sending three astronauts to its orbiting space station for a six-month mission.
The spaceship, atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket, blasted off at 17:17 (Beijing Time) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, said the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).
About 10 minutes after the launch, the Shenzhou-20 spaceship separated from the rocket and entered its designated orbit. The crew members, consisting of mission commander Chen Dong and crew members Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie, are in good shape and the launch is a complete success, the CMSA announced.
The spaceship will then perform a fast, automated rendezvous and a docking with the radial port of the space station core module Tianhe in about 6.5 hours, forming a combination of three modules and three spacecraft.
Shenzhou-20 is the 35th flight mission of China's manned space program, and the fifth crewed mission during the application and development stage of China's space station.
The crew is scheduled to return to the Dongfeng landing site in north China in late October this year.
China launches Shenzhou-20 manned spaceship
China launches Shenzhou-20 manned spaceship
The death toll from a landfill collapse in the central Philippine city of Cebu has risen to eight by Monday morning as search and rescue operations continued for another 28 missing people.
The landfill collapse occurred on Thursday as dozens of sanitation workers were working at the site. The disaster has already caused injuries of 18 people.
Family members of the missing people said the rescue progress is slow, and the hope for the survival of their loved ones is fading.
"For me, maybe I’ve accepted the worst result already because the garbage is poisonous and yesterday, it was raining very hard the whole day. Maybe they’ve been poisoned. For us, alive or dead, I hope we can get their bodies out of the garbage rubble," said Maria Kareen Rubin, a family member of a victim.
Families have set up camps on high ground near the landfill, awaiting news of their relatives. Some people at the site said cries for help could still be heard hours after the landfill collapsed, but these voices gradually faded away.
Bienvenido Ranido, who lost his wife in the disaster, said he can't believe all that happened.
"After they gave my wife oxygen, my kids and I were expecting that she would be saved that night because she was still alive. But the night came and till the next morning, they didn't manage to save her," he said.
Death toll in central Philippine landfill collapse rises to eight
