A crew of three Chinese astronauts — including the country’s youngest ever — successfully docked with the Tiangong space station early on Saturday. They were joined by an unusual group of passengers: four laboratory mice.

According to news agency AFP, the Shenzhou-21 spacecraft linked up with Tiangong at 3:22 a.m. (1922 GMT Friday), around three and a half hours after lifting off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China aboard a Long March-2F rocket.

The Tiangong station, which houses rotating teams of three astronauts every six months, is considered the centrepiece of China’s space programme — a project that has received billions of pounds in investment. A Long March-2F carrier rocket, carrying the Shenzhou-21 spacecraft and a crew of three astronauts, lifts off from

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