China counts down minutes to blast-off

BEIJING (Reuters) - China was counting down to its next leap into space on Thursday, with President Hu Jintao hailing the three astronauts as heroes, one of whom will carry out a first space walk for the technologically ambitious nation.

The launch of the Shenzhou VII will be China's third manned space venture since October 2003, when it joined Russia and the United States as the only countries to have sent astronauts into space. The space walk is expected on Saturday.

China sent two astronauts on a five-day flight on its Shenzhou VI craft in October 2005.

Hu stood before the three white-suited astronauts before they headed toward the Long March rocket that will take them aloft.

"This will be a major step forward for our country's aerospace technology," he told them at the Jiuquan launch site in barren northwest Gansu province.

"You can certainly fulfill this glorious and sacred task. The motherland and its people await your triumphant return."

Officials and state media have hailed the prospective space feats as national triumphs, crowning the successes of the Beijing Olympics and dramatizing the country's broader ambitions.

"This will be a very outward show of Chinese power," said Kevin Pollpeter, an expert on China's space program at the Defense Group Inc in Washington.

"The eventual goal is to build a space station. For them, that's become one of the trappings of being a great power."

The rocket is due to lift off between 9:07 p.m. (1307 GMT) and 10:27 p.m. (1427 GMT). A mission engineer, Zhou Jianping, said the timing of the space walk could be changed, depending on how long it took the astronauts to adjust.

The ability to do what is also called "extra-vehicular activity" is essential for China's long-term goals of assembling an orbiting station in the next decade and possibly making a visit to the moon.

SPACE POTATO

China's space program has come a long way since late leader Mao Zedong, founder of Communist China in 1949, lamented that the country could not even launch a potato into space.

But its rapidly advancing program has raised disquiet in Western capitals and in Tokyo that China has military ambitions in space, especially after a Chinese anti-satellite missile test last year. Beijing rejects the charges.

"China always advocates the peaceful use of outer space," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said. "The ultimate goal of China's manned space projects is to explore and peacefully use outer space, boost national economic development and people's well-being."

The Shenzhou VII spectacle may also help draw public attention away from the milk powder scandal that has made thousands of infants ill and once again blighted the "made in China" brand.

China's official media have lovingly described countless details of the mission. The astronauts will have a choice of nearly 80 foods, including spicy "kung-pao" chicken cooked with a "new method," nutritionist Chen Bin told Xinhua.

They will also take traditional Chinese medicine made of more than 10 herbs to treat space motion sickness, Xinhua reported.

Yet engineers overseeing the flight warned it carried risks.

Zhang Jianqi, one of the chief engineers, told Xinhua that keeping three men aloft and sending one outside the capsule over 340 km (210 miles) above the Earth would be a "big test."

"Sending up three astronauts is a jump in both quantity and quality," he said.

Chief astronaut Zhai Zhigang is an air force pilot who grew up in dirt-poor hardship with five siblings in the country's far northeast. His mother sold fried melon seeds as snacks to help pay his way through school, local media reports said.

With a name meaning "sacred vessel," the Shenzhou program is secretively run through military and government agencies and its budget is unclear. In 2003, officials said it had cost 18 billion yuan ($2.6 billion) up to then.

China has arrayed five satellite tracking ships to follow the craft's journey of three days or so, and helicopters and vehicles are ready to meet it on returning to Earth in Inner Mongolia.

(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley, Yu Le and Liu Zhen in Beijing, and Royston Chan in Jiuquan; Editing by Nick Macfie and Paul Tait)