Jing Haipeng

Jing Haipeng was born on 24 October 1966 in Yuncheng, in China's Shanxi Province. He became a fighter pilot in the People's Liberation Army Air Force, and in 1998 he was selected as one of the founding members of China's astronaut corps. Inspired, like his colleagues, by the example of Yang Liwei — China's first person in space — Jing would go on to log a career of unmatched longevity within the program, ultimately becoming the most-flown astronaut his country has ever produced.

Jing has flown four missions across fifteen years, a record no other Chinese astronaut has matched. His first came on 25 September 2008 aboard Shenzhou 7, the three-day flight that supported China's first-ever spacewalk, performed by crewmate Zhai Zhigang; Jing served as a mission specialist inside the spacecraft. In June 2012 he commanded Shenzhou 9, becoming the first Chinese astronaut to fly a second mission and leading the country's first crewed docking with the Tiangong-1 laboratory — a crew that also carried Liu Yang, China's first woman in space. He returned as commander of Shenzhou 11 in October 2016, spending about a month docked with Tiangong-2 on what was then China's longest crewed flight. Then, on 30 May 2023, in his fifties, he launched a fourth time as commander of Shenzhou 16, leading a crew that included Gui Haichao, China's first civilian astronaut — a payload scientist rather than a military pilot. That mission kept him in orbit for roughly five months before landing on 31 October 2023.

Across his four flights Jing Haipeng accumulated more than 200 days in space, and for years he held China's record for cumulative time in orbit. Decorated as a Spaceflight Hero and promoted to the rank of major general, he has become one of the most recognizable faces of China's human spaceflight enterprise, appearing frequently at universities and public events to promote the program. He remains in active service, and has said he hopes to keep flying for as long as his country's space program has need of him — a fitting sentiment from the taikonaut who has already returned to space more times than any of his compatriots.