China has sent its first woman into space on a mission to dock with an orbiting station, the latest step in an ambitious programme to go to the moon and on to Mars.

Photo: China's first female astronaut Liu Yang, waves during a sending off ceremony before she departs for the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft rocket launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, China, Saturday, June 16, 2012. China will send its first woman and two other astronauts into space Saturday to work on a temporary space station for about a week, in a key step toward becoming only the third nation to set up a permanent base in orbit. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

Umbrellas are placed over the statute of the Beatles, during a photocall, on Liverpool's waterfront, in Liverpool, England, Wednesday, March 22, 2017. The city of Liverpool is getting set to celebrate the half-centenary of “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band”, one of the most influential albums by local heroes The Beatles. (Photo by Peter Byrne/PA Wire via AP Photo)

Cast member Charlize Theron attends the “Atomic Blonde” World Premiere at Stage Theater on July 17, 2017 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Alamy Stock Photo)

Looking towards the Times Building on Times Square, the Paramount Building is on the right, and Seventh Avenue on the left crossing Broadway. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images). Circa 1930

A model presents a creation from the Juozas Statkevicius Spring-Summer 2018 fashion collection in Vilnius, Lithuania, Thursday, November 9, 2017. (Photo by Mindaugas Kulbis/AP Photo)

A reveler wearing sheepfur costume is seen in front of a bonfire on which they burn a coffin symbolizing winter during the closing ceremony of the traditional carnival parade in Mohacs, 189 kms south of Budapest, Hungary, 07 February 2016. The carnival parade of people, the so-called busos, dressed in such costumes and frightening wooden masks, using various noisy wooden rattlers is traditionally held on the seventh weekend before Easter to drive away winter, and is a revival of a legend, which says that ethnic Croats ambushed the Osmanli Turkish troops, who escaped in panic seeing the terrifying figures during the Turkish occupation of Hungary. (Photo by Tamas Soki/EPA)

A model wears a creation by “Como un pez en el agua” (Like a fish in the water) for the Spring/Summer 2017-2018 fashion show as part of 080 Barcelona fashion week in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, June 29, 2017. (Photo by Manu Fernandez/AP Photo)

Two revelers dressed as toy soldiers gesture toward a police officer in a patrol car during the traditional carnival parade in Wuerzburg, Germany, 15 February 2015. Under the motto “Carnival Parade is cool” about 160 groups with over 3,000 members took part in one of the biggest carnival parades in southern Germany. (Photo by Daniel Karmann/EPA)