Jiuquan: China will send a new team of astronauts to its space station on Thursday, as the country marches towards its ambition of becoming a space power to rival the dominance of the United States. Beijing has pumped billions of dollars into its space programme in recent years in an effort to achieve what President Xi Jinping describes as the Chinese people’s “space dream”. The world’s second-largest economy has bold plans to send a crewed mission to the Moon by the end of the decade and eventually build a base on the lunar surface. It will mark its latest milestone on Thursday, when the Shenzhou-20 mission will ferry a team of three astronauts to the country’s self-built Tiangong space station. The all-male trio will blast off at 5:17 pm (0917 GMT) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the country’s remote northwestern desert, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). Leading the mission is Chen Dong, 46, a former fighter pilot and veteran space explorer who in 2022 became the first Chinese astronaut to …