Gui Haichao meets the press for the Shenzhou-16 mission on May 29, 2023.

A bespectacled Beijing-based professor will be China's first civilian to go into space, the country's space authorities revealed on Monday.

Payload expert Gui Haichao, 36, will be sent into space on the Shenzhou-16 mission with Jing Haipeng and Zhu Yangzhu.

Gui Haichao (front) volunteers for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

A science and space engineering expert, Gui will be responsible for the in-orbit operations of science experiment payloads on China's Tiangong space station.

It's OK for payload specialists to sport eyeglasses as the physical demands are not the same as a pilot, according to experts. But Gui cannot wear glasses during ascent when the rocket vibrates.

Doctoral candidate Gui Haichao prepares a notice for his dissertation defense on June 4, 2014.

Born in Shidian county, Southwest China's Yunnan Province, Gui listened to a school broadcast when China put its first astronaut into space in 2003.

Two years later he enrolled at the school of astronautics in Beihang University with high college entrance examination grades. In 2014 he obtained a PhD in flight vehicle design.

Gui next went to Canada for postdoctoral research.

Gui Haichao lectures at Beihang University in Beijing on April 13, 2018.

In 2018 he immediately signed up upon hearing that China was selecting its first space payload experts.

He passed screening and was selected from 2,500 candidates.

Gui is one of four payload experts in the third batch of 18 reserve astronauts.

Meeting the press Monday, Gui said he felt lucky to be China's first civilian astronaut and that the interests of the motherland stood above all else.

(Photos: People's Daily, Beihang University)