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China counts down for second manned space trip

Posted on: Tuesday, 11 October 2005, 18:12 CDT

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) - China sends its second manned mission into orbit from a remote launch site in the dusty northwest on Wednesday, just two years after joining an elite club of space powers.

Astronauts Fei Julong and Nie Haisheng had entered the capsule of the Shenzhou VI after a meeting at the Jiuquan launch center with Premier Wen Jiabao, who wished their mission success.

Lift-off for the spacecraft was expected between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. Beijing time (0000-0100 GMT), carrying two former fighter pilots into orbit around Earth.

"We have made good preparations for the launch," Wang Yongzhi, chief designer for the national space program, told Xinhua news agency on Tuesday.

"Thorough tests and checkups show all indices meet design requirements," he said from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, deep in the desert of western Gansu province.

"I believe this flight will be successful."

The launch comes -- depending on the weather -- just a day after the Communist Party wrapped up a key meeting to map out the development of the world's seventh-largest economy for the next five years.

It also comes as China opens its 10th National Games, dubbed its mini-Olympic Games, ahead of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

"You will once again show that the Chinese people have the will, confidence and capability to mount scientific peaks ceaselessly," the official Xinhua news agency quoted premier Wen as telling the astronauts.

SERIOUS PLAYER

China is determined to become a serious space player and set up a National Astronaut Training Center in Beijing this week, Xinhua said, adding it was only the third such facility in the world.

Chinese television has been filled with images of spacecraft and astronauts for the past few days.

China's first man in space was Colonel Yang Liwei, who orbited Earth 14 times in the Shenzhou V craft on October 15, 2003.

His return to earth came 39 years to the day that China set off its first atomic bomb.

China has had a long -- if not always successful -- relationship with space travel.

The country invented gunpowder and legend has it that a Ming dynasty (1368-1644) official named Wan Hu attempted the world's first space launch. He strapped himself to a chair with kites in each hand as 47 servants lit 47 gunpowder-packed bamboo tubes tied to the seat.

When the smoke had cleared, Wan was apparently found to have been obliterated. But the dream survived.

(Additional reporting by Judy Hua)

Source: REUTERS

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