While India is preparing its first lunar space exploration program, the Chinese seem to be going a step further. China has successfully rocketed three Taikonauts (Chinese Astronauts!) to outer space. The Shenzhou VII spacecraft was used to carry them, sitting atop the 19-story high Long March 2F rocket, at around 13.10 GMT.

Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng, became China's first crew to journey to space. Incidentally, all three are 42-year-old fighter pilots.

While China has been successful with its manned missions prior to this, (this happens to be China's third manned mission) with the first one being completed back in 2003, this would be the first time a Chinese astronaut would be performing an EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) -- i.e., a spacewalk. Performing a space walk is considered to be the riskiest of maneuvers while in orbit and demands a high degree of technical precision, years of planning and extreme training to be executed successfully. The Chinese mission plans a 40-minute spacewalk: the spacewalker will then collect data on scientific experiments placed outside the Shenzhou VII craft and will also deploy a small satellite capable of sending images back to Earth.

This will no doubt, add another feather in the cap for the ambitious Chinese space program.

In the future, China hopes to build space stations of its own and is already working on a manned lunar mission. In fact, there has been recent buzz of them even mulling for a mission to Mars.

Chinese officials and media have been generous in hailing the scheduled space feats as national triumphs and dramatizing the country's broader ambitions. The Long March II-F, considered the workhorse of the Chinese rocket fleet will lift off from the Jiuquan space centre in China's northwestern Gansu province. It is scheduled to return to terra firma on Sunday.