Aerospace pilots are selected from among the pilots on active duty in the Air Force, aerospace flight engineers are selected from among engineers and technicians engaged in aerospace engineering and related fields, and payload specialists are selected from scientific researchers in the field of space science research and application of manned space engineering.
According to reports, in order to meet the needs of China's space station engineering tasks, the third batch of reserve astronauts has added two categories of space flight engineers and payload experts on the basis of space pilots. Among them, space pilots and space flight engineers are mainly responsible for directly controlling and managing spacecraft, as well as carrying out related technical tests. Payload specialists are mainly responsible for the on-orbit operation of payloads for space science experiments.