China poised for space odyssey

8 October 2003, 18:00 PM

AP, Beijing

After a decade of preparation, China will launch its first human being into space on October 15 in a 90-minute flight that will orbit the Earth once, a major Chinese Web site reported, quoting a top government rocketry official.

It implied that the flight, the Shenzhou 5, would carry only one human being in its bid to make China the world's third spacefaring nation.

The comments by Xie Guangxuan, director of the government's China Rocket Design Department, were reported by the Web site Sina.com, China's largest.

"China's space technology has been created by China itself. We may have started later than Russia and the United States, but it's amazing how fast we've been able to do this," Xie was quoted as saying. Sina.com, quoting an interview from a government-controlled newspaper, said Xie was "full of confidence" about the launch.