(Pakistan News & Features Services)
China launched its seventh manned space mission on June 17 to deploy three astronauts to the core module of the nation's permanent space station, according to a project leader.
Ji Qiming, assistant to the director of the China Manned Space Agency, told reporters at a pre-launch news conference on at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwestern China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region that the crew on board the Shenzhou XII spacecraft, Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo, will be lifted atop a Long March 2F carrier rocket at the launch complex and will become the first occupants of the core module after their spacecraft docks with the module, which is traveling in a low-Earth orbit hundreds of kilometers above the ground.
According to Chinese media, during their three-month stay inside the module, named Tianhe, or Harmony of Heavens, the all-male crew is tasked with testing and verifying plans, technologies and equipment for crucial elements in space station's construction and operation, such as astronauts' long-term mission arrangements, life-support system, in-orbit resupply, extravehicular activity as well as spacecraft maintenance and repair.
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