Space shuttle Atlantis launches from pad 39A on July 8, 2011 at the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch of Atlantis, STS-135, is the final flight of the shuttle program, a 12-day mission to the International Space Station. (Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images)

People remove mud and rocks from their house after a massive landslide in Chosica, March 24, 2015. Seven people were killed and more were feared dead in Peru after a massive landslide buried parts of a town amid heavy rains, authorities said on Tuesday. Six were missing and 25 injured in the disaster in Chosica, some 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) east of Lima, said Alfredo Murgueytio, the head of the National Civil Defense Institute, Indeci. (Photo by Mariana Bazo/Reuters)

In this Sunday, March 29, 2015 photo, a young performer from the Parinacochas district of Ayacuhco dances in the Vencedores de Ayacucho dance festival, in the Acho bullring in Lima, Peru. The performers sang in the Quechua language, portraying the planting of corn and potatoes. From very young children to elderly people dressed as farmers, tigers, and foxes, as well as members of auto-defense groups, soldiers and police officers, to portray the violence that tore apart their families and communities. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

Young “scissors” dancers pose after performing in a national scissors dance competition at Lima's Exposition Park, May 18, 2014. The Danza de las tijeras, or scissors dance, is a traditional dance from the Peruvian southern region of the Andes, in which two or more performers take turns dancing while accompanied with music from a harp and a violin. Dancers would display various skills and moves, which include cutting the air with the use of a scissors. (Photo by Enrique Castro-Mendivil/Reuters)

This photograph released by Indian Space Research Organization shows its polar satellite launch vehicle lifting off from a launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, Wednesday, February 15, 2017. India's space agency said it successfully launched more than 100 foreign nano satellites into orbit Wednesday aboard a single rocket.(Photo by Indian Space Research Organization via AP Photo)

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)

Wild foxes walk in front of a launch pad prior the launch of the Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz MS space ship carrying a new crew to the International Space Station, ISS at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Thursday, July 7, 2016. The Russian rocket carries U.S. astronaut Kate Rubins, Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin, and Japan astronaut Takuya Onishi. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/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)