Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman S Somanath has said that the astronauts selected for India's first human space flight programme Gaganyaan are ready and waiting for the flight to happen for the 2025 mission.
china sends its first civilian astronaut into space as it launches its mission. officials say the liftoff was a complete success and it marked another step forward for the country s ambitious space program. the three crew members on board are set to man china s space station taking over from the previous. let s go to steven jiang live in beijing. a lot of people watching liftoff today. reporter: yeah, according to state media the spacecraft just docked with the chinese space station a few minutes ago actually. and any moment now we could be seeing six chinese astronauts actually in the same structure which is quite remarkable considering the country s first manned space mission was only launched 20 years ago and the space station itself core module first entered orbit just in
what does this mean for the u.s.? reporter: many say this turns up the heat on nasa especially with a renewed interest and focus on more launches from in the u.s. space program after years of funding challenges of course. as we speak we just learned the chinese spacecraft has docked and so there are now six chinese sta astronauts in that structure. and so the pace is quite remarkable considering the first manned space mission was only launched in 2003. and the fascinating aspect is china sending a civilian, a professor from an aeronautics in beijing wearing eyeglasses for the first time because all the other previous astronauts have been military personnel. so this points to the stretch