The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy's hospital ship "Silk Road Ark" arrived at Papua New Guinea's capital Port Moresby on Wednesday, commencing a seven-day friendly visit.
This is one of the stops for the hospital ship during its "Harmony Mission 2025," and the third visit by a Chinese naval hospital ship to Papua New Guinea.
The 220-day mission marks the 11th iteration of Mission Harmony since 2010 and the first overseas mission for "Silk Road Ark," China's second domestically designed and constructed 10,000-ton-class standard ocean-going hospital ship.
During the visit, the hospital ship will provide patient treatment, community clinics, and donations of medical supplies, and it will also send medical teams to conduct physical examinations for new recruits of the Papua New Guinea Defense Force.
The hospital ship departed from Quanzhou City of east China's Fujian Province on September 5 for the humanitarian medical service mission to the South Pacific and Latin America.
China's navy hospital ship arrives in Papua New Guinea for friendly visit
The three astronauts aboard China's Shenzhou-23 spaceship have entered the country's Tiangong space station and met with their astronaut colleagues early Monday morning, as they now begin an in-orbit crew handover.
Mission commander Zhu Yangzhu and fellow astronauts Zhang Zhiyuan and Lai Ka-ying successfully entered the station's core module Tianhe after the spaceship made a fast automated rendezvous and docked with the Tianhe module at 02:45 (Beijing Time) on Monday.
The three Shenzhou-21 crew members opened the hatch at 05:13 (Beijing Time) and greeted the new arrivals, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).
The six astronauts then took group pictures for the eighth in-orbit get-together in China's aerospace history.
Notably, one of the Shenzhou-23 crew members is set to undertake a year-long stay aboard the space station, double the usual duration of previous Shenzhou missions.
The Shenzhou-23 spaceship, atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket, blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 23:08 (Beijing Time) on Sunday.
Shenzhou-23 marks the 40th flight of China's manned spaceflight program and the seventh manned flight mission since the Tiangong space station entered its application and development phase in late 2022.
Shenzhou-23 astronauts enter Tiangong space station, meet Shenzhou-21 crew
