China's space station prepares to host its first crew

China is preparing to dispatch a team of three astronauts to its ongoing space station, more than four years after its last manned spacecraft, the latest step in Beijing's ambitious program to establish itself as a global space power.

With the atmosphere tense with the West, the success of this mission is a matter of prestige for Beijing, which is preparing to celebrate on July 1, the centenary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.

A Long March-2F rocket carrying three astronauts in the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft is scheduled to blast off from a base in the Gobi Desert in northwest China on Thursday.

The astronauts will spend three months at Tiangong Station, China's longest manned space mission to date. Among their many missions is spacewalking.

"The goal of the astronauts will be to equip their new home in space and make it ready for use," said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the "Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics" in the United States. "It is a practical goal above all, not an entrepreneurial goal," he added.