Chinese president Xi Jinping met with the astronauts before take off. 
 
 
Xi said the astronauts made Chinese people feel very proud. He said the mission is glorious and sacred. He said he is confident the crew will complete the mission successfully and he looks forward to the astronauts’ triumphant return. 

 
The spacecraft will go through two docking tests with the orbiting space lab module Tiangong 1. One test will be automatic, and the other manual. Astronauts will also perform tests on the station’s life support systems. The Tiangong serves as a prototype for a larger space station China plans to launch in 2020. 

 
The astronauts will also deliver a series of talks to primary and middle school students from aboard the Tiangong. Chinese state media reports the lectures will focus on physics. NASA has long used student outreach as a means of inspiring support for the U.S. space program. 

 
Morris Jones, an Australian space analyst, said China’s expanding space program is part of an effort to show the Chinese people, and the world, the country’s rising power. 

 
“If it wants to be a super power class nation, that developing a very strong space program is one way it can project that image both internally and externally to the outside world,” he said. 

 
China was prevented from taking part in the International Space Station, in part, because of U.S. objections over the space program’s link to China’s military. China’s future space station will weigh 60 tons and be about one-sixth the size of the International Space Station. 

 
“It really shows the transformation in China over the last decade. China is now so very different from where it was just a decade ago," said Stephen Noerper, an East Asia analyst with the New York-based Korean Society. "It's grown so very much in its economic prowess, in terms of its political importance, and in terms of its technical capabilities, that it makes things like this next step in space very much significant and an important sign of where China stands in terms of its role as an emerging global player.”

 
The space mission's crew includes China's second female astronaut to travel into space. Wang Yaping is also China’s first astronaut born in the 1980s. State-run media reports say she grew up in a farming family in China’s Shandong Province before being selected as an astronaut in 2010.




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Read from source (Voice of America), here</a>

China Launches 15-day Manned Space Mission