Nie Haisheng

Nie Haisheng was born in 1964 in a rural village near Zaoyang, in Hubei Province, into a farming family of modest means. He joined the People's Liberation Army Air Force in 1983 and graduated from its flight academy in 1987, certified as a master navigator. His skill under pressure became legend within the corps: during a 1989 training flight his aircraft suffered an in-flight emergency after losing engine power, and Nie kept his composure, waiting until the last safe moment before ejecting and surviving what could have been a fatal accident. In January 1998 he was selected for China's first astronaut group and came within a hair of flying the country's very first crewed mission — he was among the final trio considered for Shenzhou 5 before Yang Liwei was chosen.

Nie has flown three times, more than almost any of his peers. On 12 October 2005 he served as operator aboard Shenzhou 6, the two-man, multi-day mission commanded by Fei Junlong that expanded China's crewed capabilities. In June 2013 he commanded Shenzhou 10, a fifteen-day flight that docked with the Tiangong-1 space laboratory and included China's first space-based lecture broadcast to schoolchildren on the ground. His most historic assignment came on 17 June 2021, when he commanded Shenzhou 12 — the first crew to live aboard the newly launched Tiangong space station. During the roughly three-month expedition he took part in a spacewalk and helped commission the station's core module, and by its end he had surpassed 100 cumulative days in space, becoming the first Chinese astronaut to cross that threshold with a combined total of about 111 days.

One of only two Chinese astronauts to have flown three times, Nie Haisheng rose to the rank of major general and became the third commander of the PLA Astronaut Corps, helping to shape the training of the next generation of taikonauts. Honored as a Spaceflight Hero and with a first-class aerospace merit medal, he is celebrated across China as a symbol of perseverance — the farmer's son and crash survivor who went on to command the first crew to inhabit his nation's space station. He remains in active service, focused on advancing China's endurance in long-duration spaceflight and mentoring the astronauts who will follow him into orbit.