The mission launched on a Long March 2F rocket, according to the Associated Press and Space.com. Chinese state media Xinhua, citing the China Manned Space Agency, reported the mission as part of China's crewed space-station programme. Xinhua and CMSA are primary sources for China's official mission objectives, but their framing should be labelled as state-agency material.
The crew is Zhu Yangzhu, the mission commander, Zhang Zhiyuan and Lai Ka-ying, also rendered by Chinese authorities as Li Jiaying in Mandarin transliteration. AP and NPR reported that Lai was born and raised in Hong Kong and is the first astronaut from the city to fly on a Chinese crewed mission. NPR reported that she holds a doctorate in computer forensics.
The technically significant element is the planned individual stay. AP reported that one of the three astronauts is set to stay in space for a year. Space.com reported that the mission will send one astronaut on China's first year-long spaceflight. Xinhua said the mission would explore human adaptability and performance limits in long-duration spaceflight. That claim is the programme's stated scientific purpose, not an independently demonstrated result.
NASA's Human Research Program provides an independent space-medicine benchmark for why a one-year stay matters. NASA says it studies long-duration spaceflight because risks differ between six-month station missions and longer missions, and it groups human-spaceflight hazards into radiation, isolation and confinement, distance from Earth, gravity fields, and hostile closed environments.
NASA also says astronauts can lose weight-bearing bone mineral density during spaceflight and that crews face muscle loss, fluid shifts, possible vision changes and kidney-stone risks if countermeasures are not used. In a separate NASA article, CIPHER project scientist Cherie Oubre described integrated research across physiological and psychological measures as a way to assess the whole human response to time spent in space. That is not comment on Shenzhou-23 specifically, but it is an independent expert frame for what a one-year station stay can test.
The mission also tests station operations. A year-long stay requires food, water, oxygen, waste management, medical monitoring and exercise systems to work across more crew handovers than a standard six-month rotation. That operational record will matter for China's stated lunar ambitions, but the launch itself does not prove readiness for a lunar landing. It is one data-gathering step in a larger crewed-space programme.