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)

South Korean college students wearing masks hold up candles as they march after a rally calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down in Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, November 12, 2016. Hundreds of thousands of people flooded Seoul's streets on Saturday demanding the resignation of Park amid an explosive political scandal, in what may be South Korea's largest protest since it shook off dictatorship three decades ago. (Photo by Lee Jin-man/AP Photo)

In this November 18, 2014 photo, Murshida, 12, sits on the lap of her mother Marjina as the train leaves for their village in West Bengal, at a railway station in New Delhi, India. Six months ago, Marjina stepped off a train in New Delhi with her two children, hoping to find a better life after her husband abandoned them without so much as a goodbye. The family spent their days at a landfill picking through other people’s garbage to find salvageable bits to resell or recycle. After six months of poverty, illness and shame, they returned to that train station in New Delhi, headed back to an uncertain future to their hometown in West Bengal. (Photo by Altaf Qadri/AP Photo)

A staff member of Yutian County poses for a video on marigold industry at an agricultural industrial park in Yutian County, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, September 20, 2020. As one of the five counties in Hotan Prefecture that have not been lifted out of poverty, Yutian County is accelerating its steps to shake off poverty by planting marigold. (Photo by Chine Nouvelle/SIPA Press/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

The picture dated September 3, 2023 shows a battle reenactment at the Crosby Victory Show in Leicestershire. It is the largest World War Two re-enactment weekend of its kind in the UK and around 15,000 visitors attended over the three-day even. Visitors stepped back in time as the farmland was transformed to recreate life during the war, with trenches, armoured vehicles and WW2 aircraft displays, including the Avro Lancaster and Douglas Dakota. (Photo by Claire Hartley/Bav Media)

People look at home-made armoured vehicle look-alikes on a street in Shenyang, Liaoning province, November 12, 2014. A man surnamed Zhang and his friends converted two cars into these two vehicles, for his son, and will be displaying them on show at a local park. The cannons on the vehicles can fire paintballs and smoke shells, local media cited Zhang as saying. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

In this photograph taken on September 22, 2016, a Pakistani devotee decorates symbolic paper boats, an offering to Muslim saint Abdulqadir Jilani as a way of giving thanks after their desire to give birth to a son was fulfilled, before dropping it into the water during an annual ceremony on the banks of the River Ravi in Lahore. The ceremony commemorates a centuries-old tale that Muslim saint Abdulqadir Jilani raised a sunken ship carrying a wedding party, at the pleading of the groom's mother, saving all the occupants. (Photo by Arif Ali/AFP Photo)

A Syrian boy plays with the head of a sacrificed sheep at a DIP camp for Interally Displaced Persons near the town of Aqrabat in Syria's northern Idlib province on August 12, 2019. Known as the “big” festival, Eid Al-Adha is celebrated each year by Muslims sacrificing various animals according to religious traditions, including cows, camels, goats and sheep. The festival marks the end of the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and commemorates Prophet Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his son to show obedience to God. (Photo by Aaref Watad/AFP Photo)