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Final preparation for spaceship launch

— Photo: Xinhua

Final stage: The Shenzhou-7 manned spaceship, the Long-March II-F rocket and the escape tower are vertically transferred to the launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China’s Gansu Province on Saturday.

JIUQUAN (Gansu): The Shenzhou-7 spaceship, the Long-March II-F rocket and the escape tower were vertically transferred to the launch pad on Saturday, marking the final stage of the preparation.

The 58.3-metre body was transferred to the launch pad on a 1,500-meter-long rail line. The transfer lasted more than one hour and two check-ups were conducted. More than 20 meteorological workers were monitoring the process as the transfer must be conducted with the wind speed under 10 metres per second.

The manned spacecraft would be launched between September 25 and 30 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in Gansu. The Long-March II-F rocket, developed in 1992, is said to be the most complicated and reliable carrier rocket in China’s aviation history with its entire launch mission successfully completed. The rocket has sent two manned spacecraft and four unmanned into space.

Since October 1996, the Long-March series rockets have been successfully launched for 108 times. Earlier reports said one of the three ‘taikonauts’ would conduct a spacewalk and cameras would be mounted outside and inside the ship for live broadcast.

While the last mission of Shenzhou-6, with a crew of two, was aimed at multiple days of manned flight, this time the task might be more stringent as one of its main goals was the spacewalk.

China successfully put two manned spacecraft into orbit in 2003 and 2005, respectively, becoming the third country to send an astronaut into space after the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. — Xinhua

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