Flight To Include Country's First Spacewalk

China has chosen three of its taikonauts -- all 42 years-old, all former fighter pilots in the People's Liberation Army, and all members in good standing of the Communist Party -- to man the nation's next space mission, set for launch on September 25.

Agence-France Presse reports a state-run website announced Tuesday one of the men will become the first Chinese spacewalker.

Colonel Zhai Zhigang will conduct a 40-minute spacewalk during the 68-hour mission, and will release a small satellite which can broadcast video of his spacewalk back to earth.

He'll wear a $15 million pressurized spacesuit patterned after a Russian design, with two lifelines supplying oxygen and communications from the Shenzhou VII spacecraft.

The craft will launch from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the desert of northwest China's Gansu province the evening of September 25. Zhigang, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng will return to land in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia September 28.

China's government is thought to have timed the first spacewalk to closely follow its successful staging of the Olympic games, providing a showcase for technological progress.

While its neighbors worry about the military implications of China's space ambitions, Chinese President Hu Jintao stressed last year, "The development of our nation's outer space exploration is completely for peaceful purposes."

And we sincerely believe that... the same way we believe all those female gymnasts were 16 years-old...

FMI: www.cnsa.gov.cn/n615709/cindex.html