China counts down to Thursday space launch

By Royston Chan

JIUQUAN, China (Reuters) - China will send its third manned mission into space on Thursday evening on a mission which will include its first space walk, the government said on Wednesday.

The Shenzhou VII will lift off from the Jiuquan space centre in a remote desert area of the northwestern province of Gansu between 9:07 p.m. (1307 GMT) and 10:27 p.m (1427 GMT), mission spokesman Wang Zhaoyao told a news conference.

Fuelling of the rocket has already begun, meaning the launch is "irreversible," the official Xinhua news agency said.

In October 2003, China became the third country to put a man in space with its own rocket, after the former Soviet Union and the United States. It sent two more astronauts on a five-day flight on its Shenzhou VI craft in October 2005.

China named three men -- Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng, all aged 42 -- for the mission.

"All of this training has been a massive test of the health and psychology of us, the astronauts," Jing said, in comments carried live on state television.

"We've overcome hardship, won over ourselves and challenged the extreme limits," he added, dressed in a blue jumpsuit and seated next to his two colleagues.

Last year, China sent its first lunar probe into orbit. China's longer-term goals include establishing a space station and landing on the moon.