China successfully launched the latest mission to its Tiangong space station on Tuesday, with a crew that includes its first civilian astronaut.

It marked the latest space milestone for China, as it looks to catch up with the United States and Russia.

Here is a look at the Chinese space program, and where it is headed:

Mao's vow

Soon after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, Chinese leader Mao Zedong pronounced: "We too will make satellites."

It took more than a decade, but in 1970, China launched its first satellite on a Long March rocket.

Human spaceflight took decades longer, with Yang Liwei becoming the first Chinese "taikonaut" in 2003.

Flight controllers at ESA's mission control center in Germany have been busy this week, working with instrument teams on the final deployments to prepare ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) for exploring Jupiter.

It has been six weeks since Juice began its journey, and in that time the Flight Control Team have deployed all the solar panels, antennas, probes and booms that were tucked away safely during launch. The last step has been the swinging out and locking into place of the probes and antennas that make up Juice's Radio & Plasma Wave Investigation (RPWI).

"It's been an exhausting but very exciting six weeks," says Angela Dietz, deputy spacecraft operations manager for the mission. "We have faced and overcome various challenges to get Juice into the right shape for getting the best science out of its trip to Jupiter."

We've had regular snapshots of the entire deployment process thanks to Juice's two onboard monitoring cameras, each with a different field of view.

After a week of stormy weather delays, SpaceX waited just a bit longer but managed an early Saturday liftoff of a satellite to knock out the Space Coast's 26th launch of the year.

A Falcon 9 carrying the Arabsat BADR-8 telecommunications satellite headed for geosynchronous orbit let the winds die down from the opening of the launch window late Friday, but managed to blast off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Space Launch Complex 40 at 12:30 a.m. a little over an hour later.

It was the fourth night launch for SpaceX this month with three previous successful Starlink missions from Cape Canaveral lighting up the sky in the wee hours.

The first-stage booster made its 14th flight with a recovery on SpaceX's droneship Just Read the Instructions down range in the Atlantic Ocean. It was the 195th time the company has recovered a booster from its rockets.

This was the second launch SpaceX has done for Arabsat following what was the first Falcon Heavy launch with a customer in 2019. SpaceX has a third launch contracted for what will be the first of Arabsat's seventh-generation satellites.