Other than that, the Chinese government isn't really saying.
After 11 years of planning to join the space-faring elite, China is on the brink of making history and reaping a propaganda windfall. But as the hour approaches, the communist government is staying silent about a date and other details, wary of risking the damage of public setbacks.
……….Beijing has nurtured the dream of manned space flight since at least the early 1970s, when its first program was scrapped during the upheaval of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. The current effort began in 1992 under the code name Project 921.
Four unmanned Shenzhou capsules have been launched, orbiting the Earth for up to a week and landing by parachute in the northern grasslands of China's Inner Mongolia region.
Foreign experts said Shenzhou 3 suffered a hard landing and might have been damaged. But Chinese officials said the fourth test flight went off without a hitch.
Such success has encouraged Chinese researchers who want support for sending probes to the moon and Mars.
On Sunday, the secretary-general of the government's Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense was quoted by a state news agency as issuing a rare public affirmation of official interest in such ambitions.
"In the future," the China News Service quoted Wang Shuquan as saying, "China will conduct tests on lunar-landing flight."***