China is ready for its longest-ever manned space mission with a spacecraft carrying two astronauts set to lift off tomorrow to dock with an experimental lab for a month-long stay under the Communist giant's ambitious plans to establish its own permanent space station by 2022.
Chinese astronauts Jing Haipeng, 50, and 37-year-old Chen Dong will be blasted into space aboard 'Shenzhou-11' (heavenly vessel) spacecraft at 7:30 am (5 am IST) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center near the Gobi Desert in northern China.
The mission will be carried out with a Long March-2F carrier rocket, Wu Ping, Deputy Director of China's manned space engineering office said.
It will dock with orbiting space lab Tiangong-2 within two days and the astronauts will stay in the lab for 30 days, she was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua news agency.
China, which conducted its first manned space mission in 2003 that lasted 15 days, is putting in billions into its space programme in a bid to catch up with the US and Europe. It also plans to launch its maiden Mars mission in 2020 to match India and others.
China has said its space program is for peaceful purposes, but it has also tested anti-satellite missiles in addition to its civilian aims.
The Shenzhou-11 spaceship will return to Earth within a day after docking the two astronauts on Tiangong-2 space lab and separating from it, according to Wu.
Jing, who has been to space twice before for Shenzhou-7 mission in 2008 and Shenzhou-9 mission in 2012, will command the mission to the space lab which was launched last month.
With a safe flight record of 1,500 hours as an air force pilot, Chen became China's second group of astronauts in May 2010, and was selected as a crew member of the Shenzhou-11 mission in June 2016, Wu said. This will be his first space mission.
The space lab was launched as part China's efforts to set up its own manned space station by 2022, which will make it the only the country to have such a facility in service as the current in-service International Space Station (ISS) retires by 2024.
Lei Fanpei, chairman of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC), recently said China plans to launch the experimental core module of its space station around 2018 with a Long March-5 heavy load carrier rocket, and the 20 ton combination space station will be sent into orbit around 2022.
The space station has a designed life of 10 years in orbit 400 km above the earth surface. With this space station, China will become the second country after Russia to have developed a space station.
China made a three-step strategy in 1992 for its manned space program, the large-scale manned space station being the last step.
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