Two Pakistani pilots are memorising Mandarin, spinning in centrifuge drills, and learning to eat, sleep and repair equipment while weightless as a decision nears on which one will become the first foreign astronaut aboard China’s Tiangong space station.
The voyage into space would be a first for the South Asian nation. Training includes intensive Chinese-language instruction, learning spacecraft systems, and adapting to both the microgravity of orbit and the g-forces of liftoff, he added. China’s space agency did not respond to a request for comment about the selection process.
It is part of broader cooperation with Beijing that straddles the Belt and Road Initiative and has produced Chinese-launched Pakistani satellites, a joint satellite-navigation system and a Pakistani-built rover due to fly on China’s Chang’e 8 lunar mission around 2028. Pilots Zeeshan Ali and Khurram Daud have spent months training at the China Astronaut Research and Training Center in Beijing for a mission that was conceived by the two countries in 2019, said Amer Gilani, who oversees human spaceflight cooperation at Pakistan’s space agency, SUPARCO.
Whoever is chosen will not return to Pakistan before launch, setting off into space directly from training in China and returning home after a recovery period following the return to Earth, Gilani said in an interview. “You cannot easily find scientists who are familiar with travelling and facing high-level g-forces,” SUPARCO’s director of artificial intelligence Uzair Ansari said, explaining this is why the two men with backgrounds in high-speed flying were chosen.
Because the third member is expected to stay for a year to enable the study of long-duration human physiology in space, the Pakistani astronaut is due to return with two members of a Chinese crew that arrived at the space station in May.
