A Pakistani astronaut will travel to China's Tiangong space station aboard the Shenzhou-24 mission, becoming the first foreigner ever to visit the orbiting outpost, Beijing's manned space agency announced on Saturday. The flight will also be the first joint mission in the history of China's human spaceflight programme to carry both Chinese and foreign astronauts.
The China Manned Space Agency said the Pakistani crew member will take part in the mission as a payload specialist, a role centred on scientific experiments and equipment carried into orbit. After a short stay aboard the station, the astronaut will return to Earth aboard the Shenzhou-23 spacecraft, which docked at Tiangong in May. The announcement was carried by the official Xinhua news agency and state broadcaster CCTV, and reported by Reuters and Dawn.
The agency did not give a date for the launch, and it did not name the astronaut who will fly. Dawn reported that the mission is expected to take place by the end of the year. Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal had said in October that the flight would take place on 25 November, but the space agency's announcement contained no departure day, and no date has been confirmed.
Two Pakistani candidates have been chosen for the programme: pilots Muhammad Zeeshan Ali and Khurram Daud. Both were selected in April after a rigorous three-stage selection and assessment process, and both have spent months training at the China Astronaut Research and Training Center in Beijing. One of them will receive the flight assignment and the other will serve as backup, but Beijing has not said publicly which of the two will go.
The mission grows out of an agreement signed in Islamabad in February 2025, under which China and Pakistan set up a cooperation programme covering the selection and training of Pakistani astronauts and their participation in flights to the Chinese space station. A Pakistani space agency official told Reuters in September that the two pilots had been training in Beijing for the mission.
For Pakistan, the flight would be a historic first: the chosen astronaut is set to become the first Pakistani to travel into space. Pakistan's space programme, run by the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO), dates back decades — the country launched its first satellite, Badr-1, in 1990 — and in 2024 it sent its first lunar cubesat, ICUBE-Q, aboard a Chinese mission. A crewed flight would take that programme into entirely new territory.
For China, the mission carries diplomatic weight as well as scientific value. The flight is being presented as part of the two countries' cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, and as an example of what Beijing calls space diplomacy. China has operated Tiangong, its own permanently crewed station, since the outpost reached its completed form in 2022, and until now every astronaut to visit it has been Chinese. Opening the station to a foreign crew member marks a new phase for a programme that has been built entirely outside the International Space Station partnership.
What the astronaut will actually do in orbit has not been spelled out in detail. As a payload specialist, the crew member's work is expected to focus on experiments and equipment rather than piloting the spacecraft, but the space agency has not published a list of the experiments planned for the short stay. More detail is likely to emerge closer to launch, when China customarily names the full crew and outlines the mission's programme.
The announcement also leaves open the question of timing. With no launch date given, the flight could take place in the coming weeks, as the minister's earlier remarks suggested, or slip further. What is settled is the shape of the mission: up on Shenzhou-24, a short stay aboard Tiangong, and home on Shenzhou-23 — a plan that underlines how routine China's crewed flights have become, with spacecraft now regularly ferrying crews to and from the station.
Reaction in Pakistan is likely to be warm: the mission has been awaited since the 2025 agreement, and the prospect of a Pakistani flag being carried into orbit has been presented by officials as a symbol of the two countries' close partnership. For now, the country waits to learn which of the two pilots will make the flight — and when the countdown will finally begin.
