China sends its first female astronaut Liu Yang into space

Liu Yang, a major in the People's Liberation Army Beijing - Arabstoday China has put its first woman in orbit after Liu Yang joined two other astronauts on the country’s latest manned space mission. The 33-year-old female fighter pilot was part of the crew on the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft, which carried out the country's first manned docking mission on Monday, taking it one step closer to building a space station within the decade. Mission commander Jing Haipeng, who has been to space twice already, was also on board for the 13-day mission which is seen as an important step in China’s stated aim to have a space station in orbit by 2020. State television devoted live coverage to the launch, which was initiated in the Gobi Desert at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre. It marks the fourth manned mission in the nine years since Yang Liwei’s maiden voyage announced China’s presence on the international space stage, with the economic superpower’s emergence recalling the famous space race between the USSR and the USA in the twentieth century. China sent its first person into space in 2003 and has since conducted several manned missions, the latest in 2008, but has never yet included a woman. Liu's mission, which has been heavily trailed in the Chinese media, has made China the third country after the Soviet Union and United States to send a woman into space using its own technology. Relatively little is known about her Yang's, although she initially trained as a cargo pilot. She has been praised for her cool handling of an incident when her jet hit a flock of pigeons but she was still able to land the heavily damaged aircraft. China sees its space programme as a symbol of its global stature, growing technical expertise, and the Communist Party's success in turning around the fortunes of the once poverty-stricken nation. The current programme aims to provide China with a space station in which a crew can live independently for several months, as at the old Russian Mir facility or the International Space Station. China was the third country to send humans into space after Russia and America, and it is now also looking into sending astronauts to the moon, although nothing has been set in stone. A white paper released last December outlining China's ambitious space programme said the country "will conduct studies on the preliminary plan for a human lunar landing". The state expenditure and fanfare surrounding the latest mission is in stark comparison to the US, where cuts in spending and the tough economic climate have pushed space exploration down the political and public agenda. President Obama has spoken of a manned mission to Mars, but many argue this looks an increasingly remote prospect.