Pakistan First Astronaut Nears Liftoff as China Picks Final Pilot

Pakistan – (Special Correspondent/Web Desk) – The race to become the Pakistan first astronaut has come down to two pilots. Zeeshan Ali and Khurram Daud are training in Beijing for a trip to China’s Tiangong space station.

China has not said who will fly or when. However, Amer Gilani of Pakistan’s space agency, Suparco, says the final choice is expected in mid-to-late October. Gilani looks after human spaceflight cooperation at the agency.

The two countries first planned this mission in 2019. Both pilots have since spent months at the China Astronaut Research and Training Centre in Beijing.

Their days are packed. They are memorising Mandarin, studying spacecraft systems and learning how to eat, sleep and repair equipment in weightlessness. They also spin in centrifuge drills to get ready for the strong forces of liftoff.

Why choose pilots? About 20 finalists were picked from a larger group of Pakistani pilots and scientists. Each was checked for health, mental strength and tolerance for g-forces. Uzair Ansari, Suparco’s director of artificial intelligence, says few scientists have that experience. Pilots used to high-speed flying were a better fit.

The chosen man will not return to Pakistan before launch. He will go from training in China straight into space. After landing, he will rest and recover before coming home.

His job in orbit will be “payload specialist”. This means he will run Pakistan’s science experiments instead of flying the ship.

Suparco received more than 300 proposals from universities in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. Chinese institutes chose four. All are biotechnology experiments meant to help fight food shortages and climate change. Each one is built and tested in Suparco’s own labs before Chinese engineers approve it.

The trip will be short, about one week. Chinese crew members usually stay around six months. The Pakistani astronaut will return with two members of the Chinese crew that reached the station in May. The third member will stay for a year to help study how long space stays affect the human body.

Pakistan still depends fully on Beijing for this journey. The spacecraft is Chinese, the launch site is Chinese, and the trainers are Chinese. Pakistan has no rocket or crewed spacecraft of its own. Only Russia, the United States and China have launched their own crewed missions. This will be the first time China carries a foreign astronaut.

Will Pakistan send someone to the moon next? Gilani says there is no official promise or talk on that yet. He says the next step depends on how this first mission goes.

Pakistan also plans a lunar rover on China’s Chang’e 8 mission, around 2028. It will use AI-based stereo imaging to spot obstacles, judge depth and plan its own path, since controllers on Earth cannot steer it in real time.

Ansari calls the mission a once-in-a-lifetime chance for Pakistani scientists.