China counts down minutes to blast-off

By Ben Blanchard

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."