Quoting Mao Zedong and hailing the importance of their mission in the Olympic year, the astronauts attempting China’s first spacewalk voiced confidence in the success of their historic voyage which begins today.

The trio of air force colonels said that they hoped China’s secretive programme would soon co-operate with other nations — remarks that underline Beijing’s eagerness that such ventures should be seen as friendly and not as launching a new arms race into space.

The Shenzhou VII — Divine Vessel — will blast off from the Jiuquan satellite launch centre in a remote desert region, becoming China’s third manned space flight. Its crew are due to return about 68 hours later, landing on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia.

Zhai Zhigang, 42, the sixth child of a poor mother in northeastern China who sold toasted sunflower seed snacks on the street to keep her son in school, will command the mission and is to become the first Chinese to walk in space.

After saluting stiffly before a small group of journalists from within a glass-walled cabin, Mr Zhai said: “Shenzhou VII is a new breakthrough, a new leap, for our manned space programme. It’s a glorious mission, with historical significance. It’s the highest honour for we astronauts to travel into space as representatives of the motherland.” Mr Zhai, who entered the space programme a decade ago and has said that he found the training dry and difficult at first, was under no illusions as to the risks. Speaking in a television interview, he said there was no room for error in his mission but that it would be impossible to comprehend the full challenges until he was in space. The father of one grinned when asked what was the worst that could happen: “We don’t come back and we really become flying spacemen.” The spacecraft will move into orbit at an altitude of 230 miles (370km) for the spacewalk, which is expected to take place on Friday. It will help China to develop the technology for docking two orbiters to create a space station.

Two astronauts — known as taikonauts in China from the Mandarin word for space — will don the 265lb (120kg) suits, one made in Russia and the other the homemade Feitian model. Only one of the crew will leave the module to retrieve scientific experiments placed outside; it will be broadcast live on Chinese television.

China has taken great pride in the development of its space programme, but revealed that Russian technicians would be on the ground to help to direct the spacewalk. China became the third country, after the US and Russia, independently to put a man in space when Yang Liwei, a fighter pilot, circled the Earth aboard the Shenzhou V in October 2003.

Mr Zhai and his companions, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng, are all fighter pilots and have trained for ten years. Mr Jing quoted from a poem by Mao to describe his mission: “Perilous peaks reveal boundless beauty.”

Naming the star sailors

Astronaut, from the Ancient Greek words for star and sailor, is the term used for a US space voyager

Cosmonaut, also derived from Greek, meaning universe-sailor, is used to describe Russians

Taikonaut comes from the Mandarin word for space, although the word yuhangyuan, travellers of the universe, is also used

Spationaut, a mixture of Latin and Greek, is sometimes used by the French

Angkasawan, the Malay word for astronaut, is the title for the putative Malaysian space travellers being trained in the country’s first space programme

Source: NASA, Angkasawan.com , AP

Times Recommends

• UN may halt 400-year-old 'freedom of the seas'
• Where the Rosetta belongs can’t be set in stone
• Gas deal on hold, but Ukraine may pay in the end