meantime, three chinese astronauts are settling in on their nation s space station. they blasted off earlier today on a six-month mission to help build the uncompleted orbiter. agency cnn s david culver tells us china is pursuing an aggressive space race with the united states. reporter: 90-year-old star trek actor william shatner blasted into space, becoming the oldest man to reach such heights amid great fanfare in the u.s. oh, wow. reporter: thousands of miles away here in the goby desert, china s space hey not set records but it shows the fast growing and growing space mission. cnn got access, shenzhou 13
pushes off this across northern china. you see that shading of brown across the screen there? that s sand mixing in and sweeping across beijing obviously causing the air had ards. look what it did to the city s streets, snarling traffic, causing blackouts, people lost power because of the strong winds and the heavy pollution moving through. the gobi desert is the main source for our region and the duststorms. this is common this time of year. the winds pick up off the desert and it causes health has had hazards for young children and elderly. we do have a break in the wind on thursday event into friday. but there s a possibility it picks up again. beer going to watch out for this very closely. cold front moves east and bring in a chance of rain to well, that would be japan.
helping the situation and they re calling for the army to intervene. linda kincaid, cnn. the biggest in 13 years swept through parts of northern china into beijing on wednesday, blankets cities in dust and causing a bit of traffic chaos, as well. at times, it was difficult for people to open their eyes. we re joined now with more on thp. of course, one of the problems of this, it s the fine particulate matter which gets into the lungs and that s a health hazard. on top of that, it s already a very polluted city. so you add in a sandstorm. i m an asthmatic myself, and breathing into that fine particulate matters into your lungs instantly causes problems for me. and all of this is the sand coming in from the goby desert. yes. first, take a listen to what it sounds like to be in the middle of a sandstorm.