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This is an American press report.
BEIJING (AP) -- China revealed plans Thursday to become the world's third space-traveling nation by launching a manned capsule sometime this year, an expensive prize for a government hungry to showcase its progress and increase its global prestige.
Such an expedition would represent both a scientific watershed and a public relations victory for China's military-linked space program. It came as the latest unmanned Chinese craft, Shenzhou IV, orbited the Earth for a fourth day -- a trip described after it began Monday as a direct precursor to a manned flight.
The next mission, Shenzhou V, will contain at least one ``taikonaut,'' the Chinese version of an astronaut, according to a report from China News Service, a government news agency aimed at Chinese speakers abroad.
It quoted Yuan Jie, director of the Shanghai Aerospace Bureau, as saying the flight will take place during the second half of 2003. Yuan's office confirmed the report Thursday.
``Shenzhou V will be manned,'' said an official there, reached by telephone. He refused to give his name but quoted Yuan as saying the flight would be a ``breakthrough in China's manned aerospace history.''
Only the United States and Russia -- in its current incarnation and as the Soviet Union -- have sent human beings into space on their own. Astronauts from other nations have been in space, though only by collaborating with either Washington or Moscow.
Astronauts picked from the ranks of fighter pilots in China's air force have been training for several years to make the first flights into space. Any such pioneers would immediately become legendary figures in China, whose propaganda machine is always on the lookout for new demonstrations of patriotism.
``The short-term goal is to send Chinese into space. The grand vision for the future is to explore space. Both are inspiring to the Chinese people,'' said Huang Chunping, chief commander of rocketry for the Shenzhou project, quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency.
It wasn't immediately clear how many fliers would be aboard the Chinese mission. The news agency's dispatch used a Chinese character that could be interpreted as singular or plural.
``China's Shenzhou V will send a person into space in the latter half of this year,'' CNS said in the dispatch on its Web site. That suggested the next Shenzhou launch would be the manned flight and that there would be no more test flights.
The current craft, Shenzhou IV, was orbiting the Earth on Thursday, midway through what state media say will be a seven-day mission. Chinese officials who supervised the launch have been talking for days of an imminent manned space flight.
The government has long been enthusiastic about its space program, which it has cast as a symbol of technological progress in a nation ascendant -- much as the United States did with NASA's Apollo launches during the ``space race'' of the 1960s against the Soviet Union.
But that self-promotion has been tempered by the secrecy still prevalent among China's leaders. Much of the space program's research is overseen by the military, and launches -- Monday's included -- haven't been announced in advance, possibly out of fear something might go very publicly wrong.
In a rare glimpse into its taikonaut program, the newspaper China Space News posted a photograph on its Web site of two men in space suits and offering what might be the first public view of the faces of China's future space travelers.
The photo showed the men with their helmets removed; one was grinning broadly. By contrast, the few pictures released earlier showed them from behind or with their features obscured by helmets.
Earlier this week, President Jiang Zemin called for the continuing development of the program as he rhapsodized about the Shenzhou IV launch. He called it a ``great victory'' and implied that manned flights weren't far off.
Jiang encouraged all involved to ``redouble their efforts and work in a pioneering spirit to make more contributions to the peaceful development of the outer space,'' the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Zhang Qingwei, president of the state-run China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., which manufactured the capsule, was quoted as saying earlier this week that a manned flight was ``just around the corner'' if no problems were reported during the current Shenzhou flight.
The Shenzhou IV, which blasted off before dawn Monday from a rocket base in the Gobi desert, carried all the equipment for manned flight, the government has said. It says the mission is testing life-support and other systems.
Its flight was the fourth for a Shenzhou capsule -- whose name means ``Sacred Vessel'' -- and the second in less than 10 months, signaling an increased pace of launches.
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02/09/03 05:50
This is the Shenzhou family former spacecraft Shenzhou 2 structure
Shenzhou V
