Pakistan's First Astronaut Will Fly to China's Tiangong Station on November 25

Pakistan's first astronaut will launch for China's Tiangong space station on November 25, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said on Saturday, putting a date on a mission the government has promised since Suparco and the China Manned Space Agency signed a training agreement in February 2025.

Iqbal made the announcement at the closing ceremony of World Space Week in Narowal, organised jointly with Suparco, the first time the event has been held in the city. He did not name which candidate would fly.

Two candidates, one seat

Two Pakistan Air Force pilots, Zeeshan Ali and Khurram Daud, were shortlisted from about 20 finalists and have been training at the China Astronaut Research and Training Center in Beijing, according to Geo News. Whichever of the two is chosen will fly as a payload specialist, running Pakistani scientific experiments during a stay of roughly a week on Tiangong, rather than piloting the spacecraft. Neither Iqbal nor Geo's report said when the final selection would be made public.

The seat itself is a first in two directions: it would be the first time a Pakistani has reached space, and the first time a foreign astronaut has flown aboard China's own station since Tiangong became fully operational.

Why a Chinese seat, not an American or Russian one

The mission traces back to the February 2025 agreement under which Suparco and the China Manned Space Agency committed to training two Pakistani candidates, with one eventually flying under China's bilateral human spaceflight programme. Iqbal told the Narowal audience that cooperating with China "will help Pakistan reach new heights in the field of space research," the Express Tribune reported, framing the mission as part of a broader space partnership that also covers a Pakistani lunar rover planned for China's Chang'e-8 mission around 2028.

A moon landing goal and a museum for Narowal

Iqbal used the same speech to restate a target of landing a Pakistani mission on the Moon by 2035, with Chinese support, and announced plans for what he called Pakistan's first space museum, to be built at the University of Narowal to encourage students toward space science and research. "If we do not conduct research, we will fall behind in the race for development," he said, according to Geo News.

The announcement follows a year in which the government has repeatedly framed science and technology investment as central to its economic plans, including Iqbal's own description of Pakistan's human-capital gap as a "national emergency" and a push to lift Pakistani universities in this year's global rankings.

What is still unconfirmed

Neither the government nor Suparco has said which of the two candidates will be named, what launch vehicle will carry the mission, or whether the November 25 date is fixed to a specific Chinese resupply or crew-rotation flight to Tiangong. Pakistan's astronaut programme has set and shifted target years before, so the next marker to watch is a formal crew announcement from Suparco or the China Manned Space Agency ahead of the launch.

Build Better Pakistan's Education Desk is tracking the astronaut selection and will update this piece once Suparco or the China Manned Space Agency names the crew.