China Prepares Longest Ever Manned Space Mission, Blasting Off Tomorrow

China is preparing its fifth and largest ever manned spacecraft launch tomorrow. Coming a full year after the 13-day Shenzhou 9 mission, tomorrow’s take-off of Shenzhou-10 is scheduled for 5:38 p.m Beijing time (June 11), according to Xinhua state news agency. The space trip will last 15 days and will transport three taikonauts – two men and one woman – into the country’s record books.

As with most of China’s major launches, the newest Shenzhou craft will blast off from the Jiuquan Launch Center in the Gobi desert in Inner Mongolia province.

CNN correspondent Nic Robertson is the only western journalist at the launch center ahead of Tuesday’s launch. He says on Twitter that propellant fueling begins this afternoon.

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The mission’s core aim is to head back to the Tiangong 1 space laboratory to perform medical testing. It’s likely this will be the last launch until 2015 when China begins to build its next-generation Tiangong 2 space lab.

Last year’s crew was made up of China’s first female astronaut, but Liu Yang will not be the one going into orbit again this year. This time, China’s leading female taikonaut is Wang Yaping, whom Xinhua says is the daughter of a farming family in eastern China.

China’s first ever manned space mission was in 2003 aboard the Shenzhou-5.

(Unmodified version of photo is by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)