Chinese astronauts onboard the Shenzhou-7 spaceship, which is preliminarily scheduled to blast off in 2007 will hopefully perform first space walk, revealed the national space hero Yang Liwei at the Exhibition of China's Manned Space flight opened Aug 11 in Fuzhou, capital of east China's Fujian Province.

According to Yang, Shenzhou-6 spaceship will be launched in this autumn. Unlike Shenzhou-5, shenzhou-6 will carry more than one astronaut and stay in space for more than one day. Therefore its requirements for all system are stricter. Its environment control system and life guarantee system are more complex than that of Shenzhou-5. The project is progressing smoothly, but the astronauts onboard have not been confirmed.

What are Shenzhou-6 and Shenzhou-7 like? Yang said every spaceship of China makes progress on the basis of its predecessors.

After the launch of Shenzhou-6, Chinese astronauts onboard Shenzhou-7 to be launched in 2007 will perform space walk for the first time. Following that the Shenzhou-9 will dock with the orbital cabin left by Shenzhou-8 for the first time.

By People's Daily Online