China sends astronauts on first space walk mission

Jiuquan: China's third manned space mission blasted off from a remote desert site on Thursday on a trip expected to include the technologically ambitious nation's first space walk.

The Shenzhou VII shot up into an inky black sky at the Jiuquan launch centre in the northwestern province of Gansu at exactly 9.10pm local time, the official Xinhua news agency said, in a take-off carried live on state television.

It is China's third manned space venture since October 2003, when it joined Russia and the United States as the only countries to have sent astronauts into space. The space walk is expected tomorrow.

China sent two astronauts on a five-day flight on its Shenzhou VI craft in October 2005.

Space heroes

Chinese President Hu Jintao stood before the three white-suited astronauts before they headed toward the Long March rocket taking them aloft, and hailed them as heroes.

"This will be a major step forward for our country's aerospace technology," he said.

"You can certainly fulfil this glorious and sacred task. The motherland and its people await your triumphant return," he added.

Officials and state media have hailed the prospective space feats as national triumphs, crowning the successes of the Beijing Olympics and dramatising the country's broader ambitions.

"This will be a very outward show of Chinese power," said Kevin Pollpeter, an expert on China's space programme at the Defense Group Inc in Washington.

"The eventual goal is to build a space station. For them, that's become one of the trappings of being a great power."

A mission engineer, Zhou Jianping, said the timing of the space walk could be changed, depending on how long it took the astronauts to adjust, Xinhua said.

The ability to do what is also called "extra-vehicular activity" is essential for China's long-term goals of assembling an orbiting station in the next decade and possibly making a visit to the moon.

China's space programme has come a long way since late leader Mao Zedong, founder of Communist China in 1949, lamented that the country could not even launch a potato into space. But its rapidly advancing programme has raised disquiet in the West and in Tokyo that China has military ambitions in space, especially after a Chinese anti-satellite missile test last year. Beijing rejects the charges.

"China always advocates the peaceful use of outer space," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said.