China to Launch 3rd Manned Space Mission
Posted on: Tuesday, 20 November 2007, 18:00 CST
BEIJING - China will launch its third manned space mission after next year's Beijing Olympics, a newspaper reported Tuesday.
The Shenzhou 7 launch is on track for October 2008, the China Daily newspaper said on its Web site, citing Pang Zhihao, a researcher with the China Academy of Space Technology.
The trip is to carry three astronauts and will feature China's first space walk.
Also Tuesday, official media reported that China's first moon probe, called Chang'e 1 after a mythical Chinese moon goddess, had positioned its directional antenna toward Earth to allow data to be transmitted home later this month.
State broadcaster CCTV and the official Xinhua News Agency said the probe had orbited the moon 158 times by mid-Tuesday at an altitude of 124 miles above the lunar surface. Launched in late October, the probe is due to have surveyed the entire surface of the moon at least once by early next year.
China has denied any link between the manned mission and its staging of the Aug. 8-24 Olympics, although both events are a source of huge national pride.
In 2003, China became only the third country in the world after Russia and the United States to send a human into orbit, following that with a two-man mission in 2005. Its moon probe was launched about a month after rival Japan blasted its own lunar orbiter into space.
China has announced longer-term plans for a permanent presence in space, and the China Daily said in a separate report that the new generation Long March 5 rocket, capable of launching 25-ton components for a space station into Earth orbit, could be ready by 2013. The rocket is being developed at a cost of $529 million in Tianjin, just southeast of Beijing, the paper said, citing Zhang Yanhe, deputy director of the Tianjin Office of Science Technology and Industry for Space.
Source: Associated Press/AP Online
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