Gallery of 3-astronaut crew of Shenzhou-9 Spacecraft Mission

The three astronauts will board the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft on Saturday at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China to complete the nation’s first manned space docking mission.

Jing Haipeng, 46, one of the three taikonauts who will be carried by the Shenzhou-9 spaceship for China’s first manned space docking mission with the orbiting Tiangong-1 space lab module. Jing was among the six trainees for the Shenzhou-6 mission in 2005, and also one of the three taikonauts who were carried by the Shenzhou-7 spaceship for China’s third manned space mission in 2008.

Liu Wang, 43, one of the three taikonauts who will be carried by the Shenzhou-9 spaceship for China’s first manned space docking mission with the orbiting Tiangong-1 space lab module. Liu became one of the country’s first batch of astronauts in 1998.

Liu Yang, 34, one of the three taikonauts who will be carried by the Shenzhou-9 spaceship for China’s first manned space docking mission with the orbiting Tiangong-1 space lab module. Liu was selected as a taikonaut in 2010.

Liu Yang, China’s first female astronaut to begin a space mission soon, met the media on Friday with male crewmates Jing Haipeng and Liu Wang. Dressed in a blue working suit, the 33-year-old married woman said that to be an astronaut, one has to obtain a great deal of theoretical knowledge, go through very challenging environmental training and pass tough examinations with no errors.

All three crew members are former pilots of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). They are all members of the Communist Party of China.
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Joining the Air Force in 1997, Liu was a veteran pilot with 1,680 hours of flying experience and the deputy head of a PLA flight unit before being recruited as a prospective astronaut in May 2010. She is now an Air Force major.

After two years of training, which shored up her astronautic skills and adaptability to the space environment, Liu excelled in testing and was selected in March this year to crew the Shenzhou-9.

As China’s manned space program develops, Chinese astronauts will be able to engage in regular space flights, said Jing Haipeng, the only astronaut who has participated twice in China’s manned space missions.