The crew of China’s most ambitious space mission yet — including its first woman astronaut — boarded a rocket Saturday for their journey to the final frontier.

Shenzhou-9 — China’s fourth manned space mission — was due to launch at 6:37 pm (1037 GMT) from the remote Gobi desert in the nation’s northwest, in a bid to achieve the country’s first manual space docking high above Earth.

The crew were headed by Jing Haipeng, a veteran astronaut who has gone to space twice already. Liu Wang, who has been in the space programme for 14 years, is in charge of manual docking manoeuvres.

Meanwhile Liu Yang, 33, who has created a stir in the media and online for becoming China’s first woman to travel to space, will conduct aerospace medical experiments and other space tests.

At a pre-departure ceremony broadcast on state TV Wu Bangguo, chairman of the National People’s Congress, told them: ‘The country and the people are looking forward to your successful return.’

The mission will last 10 days, during which the crew will perform experiments and the manual space docking — a highly technical procedure that brings two vessels together in high speed orbit.

Successful completion of the rendezvous between the Shenzhou-9 (‘Divine […]