BEIJING (Reuters) -&nbsp;China&nbsp;sent three astronauts to its now fully operational&nbsp;space&nbsp;station&nbsp;as part of crew rotation on Tuesday in the fifth manned&nbsp;mission&nbsp;to the&nbsp;Chinese&nbsp;space&nbsp;outpost since 2021,&nbsp;state&nbsp;media&nbsp;reported.
The&nbsp;spacecraft,&nbsp;Shenzhou-16, or "Divine Vessel", and its three passengers lifted off atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert in northwest&nbsp;China&nbsp;at 9:31 a.m. (0131 GMT).
The astronauts on&nbsp;Shenzhou-16&nbsp;will replace the three-member crew of the&nbsp;Shenzhou-15, who arrived at the&nbsp;space&nbsp;station&nbsp;late in November.
The&nbsp;station, comprising three modules, was completed at the end of last year after 11 crewed and uncrewed&nbsp;missions since April 2021, beginning with the launch of the first and biggest module - the&nbsp;station's main living quarters.
China&nbsp;has already announced plans to expand its permanently inhabited&nbsp;space&nbsp;outpost, with the next module slated to dock with the current T-shaped&nbsp;space&nbsp;station&nbsp;to create a cross-shaped structure.
Leading the&nbsp;Shenzhou-16&nbsp;mission&nbsp;was Jing Haipeng, 56, a senior&nbsp;spacecraft pilot from&nbsp;China's first batch of astronaut trainees in the late 1990s. He had travelled to&nbsp;space&nbsp;three times before, including two trips as&nbsp;mission&nbsp;commander.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Jing flew with Zhu Yangzhu and Gui Haichao, both 36 and part of&nbsp;China's third batch of astronauts. The&nbsp;mission&nbsp;is Zhu's and Gui's first&nbsp;spaceflight.
Former military university professor Zhu will serve as&nbsp;spaceflight engineer while Gui, a professor at Beihang University, will serve as the payload specialist on the&nbsp;mission, managing science experiments at the&nbsp;space&nbsp;station.
Beijing is expected to launch one more crewed&nbsp;mission&nbsp;to the orbiting outpost this year.
Also by the end of 2023,&nbsp;China&nbsp;is due to a launch&nbsp;space&nbsp;telescope the size of a large bus.
Known as Xuntian, or "Surveying the Heavens" in&nbsp;Chinese, the orbital telescope will boast a field of view 350 times wider than that of the Hubble&nbsp;Space&nbsp;Telescope, which was launched 33 years ago.
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(Reporting by Liz Lee and Qiaoyi Li; additional reporting by Liangping Gao and Ethan Wang; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Neil Fullick and Gerry Doyle)

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China launches Shenzhou-16 mission to Chinese space station - state media