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)

An Iraqi woman grieves at the scene of a bomb attack in Jameela market in the Iraqi capital's crowded Sadr City neighborhood Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, August 13, 2015. A massive truck bomb ripped through a popular Baghdad food market in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in the early morning hours on Thursday, killing dozens of people, police officials said. (Photo by Karim Kadim/AP Photo)

Residents carry an injured woman rescued from a collapsed house in Funing county in Yancheng city of eastern China's Jiangsu Province on Thursday June 23, 2016. A powerful tornado hit Thursday, with reports of dozens killed and large numbers of buildings destroyed in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu, according to state media. (Photo by Chinatopix via AP Photo)

A woman plays around as she walks across a glass-bottomed suspension bridge in a scenic zone in Pingjiang county in southern China's Hunan province Thursday, September 24, 2015. The bridge, 300 meters (984 feet) long and 180 meters (590 feet), opened to visitors on Thursday for the first time since its conversion from a regular suspension bridge was completed. (Photo by Chinatopix Via AP Photo)

In this photo taken Wednesday, March 8, 2017, a woman herder sits with her goats in a remote desert area near Bandar Beyla in Somalia's semiautonomous northeastern state of Puntland. Somalia has declared the drought a national disaster, part of what the United Nations calls the largest humanitarian crisis since the world body was founded in 1945, and with animals being central to many the drought threatens their main sources of nutrition and survival. (Photo by Ben Curtis/AP Photo)

A woman who was injured after being trampled is helped away, after residents desperate for a planned distribution of food for those suffering under Kenya's coronavirus-related movement restrictions pushed through a gate and created a stampede, causing police to fire tear gas and leaving several injured, at a district office in the Kibera slum, or informal settlement, of Nairobi, Friday, April 10, 2020. (Photo by Brian Inganga/AP Photo)

A heavily tattooed Japanese woman poses for photographs near Asakusa Temple during the third and final day of Sanja Festival, on May 20, 2018 in Tokyo, Japan. Sanja Festival is one of Japan's major festivals and is held annually in the Asakusa area of Tokyo. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

A unidentified woman protests at Broad Street for the pending arrival of Vice President Mike Pence at the Union League, in Philadelphia, Monday, July 23, 2018. Dozens of demonstrators dressed as characters from the novel-turned-TV series “The Handmaid's Tale” descended on downtown Philadelphia to protest Pence’s visit. (Photo by Jose F. Moreno/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP Photo)