A woman sits next to a Gollum figure on the “Middle-earth Shuttle” subway train November 18, 2003 in New York City. The train's cars were decorated with Middle-earth creatures, vines, moss and stones to celebrate the November 18 DVD and VHS release of the Special Extended Edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

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)

A woman moves a sandbag along a flooded road in the aftermath of the heaviest recorded rainfall in Zhengzhou in central China's Henan province on Saturday, July 24, 2021. Rescuers used bulldozers and rubber boats to move residents out of flooded neighborhoods in central China on Saturday after torrential rains killed at least 56 people. (Photo by Dake Kang/AP Photo)

A girl eats a watermelon slice while at a school building where Syrians – displaced from the area of Ras al-Ain by the Turkish offensive on the northeast – are staying in the city of Hasakah, on June 30, 2020. (Photo by Delil Souleiman/AFP Photo)

This aerial picture taken on the night of November 12, 2018 shows traffic on an elevated intersection in downtown Shanghai, China. (Photo by Johannes Eisele/AFP Photo)

A South African police officer speaks to residents of the densely populated Alexandra township east of Johannesburg Friday, March 27, 2020. (Photo by Jerome Delay/AP Photo)

A long exposure image of embers flying off burnt out trees following the wind driven wildfire ranging in the mountain area near Rancho Cucamonga late 30 April 2014. Earlier in the day more than 1,500 homes were evacuated as the Etiwanda fire charred around 1,000 acres in San Barnardino National Forest. (Photo by Stuart Palley/EPA)

Dancers of the Palestinian Jafra Dabke Team perform a traditional dabke dance while wearing latex gloves and surgical masks for people confined due to a COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic lockdown in the village of Tarqumia northwest of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, on April 15, 2020. (Photo by Hazem Bader/AFP Photo)