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| Saturday, 13 March 2004 |
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China to select woman astronaut later next year BEIJING, Friday (Xinhua) China plans to recruit woman astronauts for its space voyage later next year, and they are.expected to be selected from among the women around the Chinese mainland and the Hong Kong and Macao special administration regions, a senior space official said here Friday. Hu Shixiang, deputy chief commander of China's Manned Space Program, said the selection will not be confined to the ranks of woman pilots in an exclusive interview with Xinhua. Hu, a deputy to the national legislature, acknowledged that China's first group of astronauts, all male, were selected from the air force of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), including Yang Liwei, who became China's first astronaut orbiting the earth in October of 2003 aboard the home-made spaceship. Gu Xiulian, chairman of the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF), Saturday told a gathering that she had raised the proposal that women astronauts be trained for space missions after the country's maiden manned space trip last October, and it has been accepted by central authorities, Beijing Youth Daily reported. A senior woman official with the Beijing-based Space Medical Engineering Institute, who was in charge of training astronauts, said that spaceship designers will have to make minor changes to the facilities inside the ship so as to help accommodate woman astronauts. China joined Russia and the United States in the elite club of manned spaceflight last October as the home-made Shenzhou-5 spacecraft, piloted by Yang Liwei, a former fighter pilot of the PLA air force, orbited the Earth 14 times and returned safely. |
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