NASA's new moon rocket lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Wednesday morning, November 16, 2022, as seen from Harbor town Marina on Merritt Island, Fla. The moon is visible in the sky. (Photo by Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today via AP Photo)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket breaks the sound barrier as it launches the next batch of Starlink satellites (mission; Starlink 6-7), at 12:01 AM from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida on Friday, July 28, 2023. (Photo by Joe Marino/UPI/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

This NASA photo shows a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover onboard as it launches from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, on July 30, 2020, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Perseverance rover is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the Red Planet. (Photo by Joel Kowsky/NASA)

A cat walks past a Soyuz space ship installed at a museum, at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Tuesday, November 15, 2016. The start of the new Soyuz mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled on early Friday, Nov. 18 local time. The Russian rocket will carry French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and U.S. astronaut Peggy Annette Whitson. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

A Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket, with a payload of 60 satellites for SpaceX's Starlink broadband network, lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 during a time exposure at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Thursday, May 23, 2019. (Photo by Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today via AP Photo)

Crowds on the beach in Cape Canaveral, Fla., watch the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 Crew Dragon on its Crew-1 mission carrying four astronauts, Sunday, November 15, 2020, in this 3 1/2-minute time exposure. The rocket was launched from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center at 7:27 p.m. Sunday evening. (Photo by Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today via AP Photo)

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)

The Soyuz TMA-17M spacecraft carrying the International Space Station (ISS) crew blasts off from the launch pad at the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, July 23, 2015. The Russian rocket carries Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, U.S. astronaut Kjell Lindgen and Japan astronaut Kimiya Yui. (Photo by Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)