By Eduardo Baptista

BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s Shenzhou-22 mission blasted off on Tuesday as the country looks to plug safety risks to its crewed spaceflight program and space station after a vessel was damaged in orbit earlier this month.

The Shenzhou-22 spacecraft took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 12:11 p.m. (0411 GMT), according to a livestream on state-owned broadcaster CCTV.

The spacecraft will travel to China’s permanently inhabited Tiangong space station, where three astronauts currently reside with no flightworthy vessel that could return them to Earth in the event of an emergency.

On November 5, the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft was meant to return a trio of Chinese astronauts back to Earth but was deemed unfit to fly after sustaining suspected d

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