China successfully launched a spaceship Saturday carrying three astronauts including a woman to the nation's first space station, as President Xi Jinping has pledged to make the Asian country a space power in the next 10 years.
In April, China launched the core module for the space station, which is still under construction. Last month, three other Chinese astronauts, who had been sent to the station, returned to Earth safely after completing their three-month mission.
A rocket with the Shenzhou-13 spaceship atop blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China's northwest province of Gansu on Saturday. The three Chinese astronauts are scheduled to live aboard its core module for six months.
The three are Wang Yaping, China's female astronaut, as well as Zhai Zhigang and Ye Guangfu, the nation's space authorities said.
As the Communist-led government has been steadily moving forward with space development projects in recent years, expectations are rife that competition between China and the United States will intensify in the field.
Late last year, an unmanned Chinese space probe returned to Earth with the first lunar soil samples in 44 years as China became the third country to bring back material from the Moon after the United States and the Soviet Union, Russia's predecessor.
In May, China started probing the surface of Mars, becoming the second nation to undertake a mission on the red planet after the United States.
China launched its first manned spacecraft in 2003, making it the third country to put a human in space after the United States and the Soviet Union. Since 2012, China has sent two female astronauts to space.
On Thursday, China also sent its first solar exploration satellite into space.
Meanwhile, the International Space Station, operated by the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency, is set to conclude its mission in 2024. China would become the only nation to have its own space station in the future.
Concerns, however, are growing over China's space technology across the globe. When a large Chinese rocket, which carried the core module of the space station, re-entered Earth's atmosphere in May, debris fell into the Indian Ocean near the Maldives.
The United States criticized the Chinese government for not fully managing the rocket's return to the atmosphere.
