Shenzhou VII is China’s third manned space launch, and the first one which will include a spacewalk, that is an astronaut (or taikonaut as the Chinese moniker goes) going out into open space wearing a life-support suit. It’s a big moment for China, which is using its ambitious space program to prove to the world that it can kick it with the best of them.

Fueling for the Shenzhou rocket, which is a Chinese-modified version of a Russian Soyuz rocket, was done on Thursday and it marked the point of no return from which the mission can not be stopped. The mission’s 80-minute launch window is from 9:27 am to 10:27 am Eastern Time. The spacecraft will be propelled by a Long-March II-F carrier and will remain in orbit for three days at an altitude of 343 kilometers.

The three taikonauts have been selected from the People’s Liberation Army Air Force to form the mission’s crew. Their names are Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming, and Jing Haipeng. All of them have been on the reserve crews for the Shenzhou V (Zhigang only) and VII (all three of them) programs. Zhigang will be the first Chinese man to walk in space, with Boming selected as his backup. Jing Haipeng is the mission’s pilot. Aside from the spacewalk, a secondary objective of the Shenzhou VII mission will be to release a small monitoring satellite and data relay.

While this is the first mission to see taikonauts outside the craft in space, it is not the first manned mission. Its predecessor, the Shenzhou VI, carried a two-man crew and was up in space for five days. China also launched a satellite in orbit around the moon. Named Chang’e after a Chinese moon goddess, the satellite which will orbit the moon for about a year is a precursor to future plans of a Chinese moon landing.

China has a comprehensive space program planned for as far as 2050, keeping in mind the possibility of quite practical benefits resulting from the program. Even though the focus right now is on basic exploration and space faring technology, China has considered extracting mineral resources from the moon, or launching and exporting its own commercial satellites (which it has already begun to do), or even the possibility of using space installations – like the also upcoming Chinese space station – to test out new forms of agriculture.

The Chinese are nothing if not practical, and the direction they’re taking their space program in, far from being just an issue of national pride (although that is certainly involved), may bring up previously unconsidered avenues of development for the country, and if they and the rest of the world play along nice, and don’t turn this into a military space race, their co-operation may move forward humanity as a whole. That would certainly be nice.

Update: China's Shenzhou VII was succesfuly launched from the Jiuquan space centre in the north-western province at 9:10 pm (1310 GMT).

All systems were normal for the first 15 minutes of the space flight, according to mission control staff heard speaking in the television broadcast.