"It will be launched by the end of this year," Liu Youguang, general manager of the space department at China Great Wall Industry Corp., told AFP on the sidelines of the Paris Air Show here.

Asked whether the mission would be timed, for maximum political effect, for the 54th anniversary on October 1 of the founding of the People's Republic, he said, "it could be later."

"It could be two (astronauts) maybe," he said, adding that the capsule would also carry scientific experiments in addition to the human payload.

There have been four test flights of China's manned capsule and Liu confirmed press reports that the last one, Shenzhou IV, which returned to Earth on January 5 after a 162-hour mission, was the final dress rehearsal.

If all goes well, China will become only the third country to launch a human into space, more than four decades after the former Soviet Union and the United States.

But if two astronauts -- or three, as the Chinese media reported in February -- go on the maiden flight, that will be a first.

It would also be interpreted as a sign of the country's growing confidence and ambitions in space. The first Soviet and US missions were both one-man missions in order to reduce the risk if something went wrong in the nascent days of space travel.

Space experts believe the Shenzhou is a copy of the Soviet-era workhorse, the Soyuz, albeit enlarged and updated in key areas such as the life-support and computer systems.

But Liu denied this, saying "this spaceship is totally designed by China."

The only Russian help came from a joint programme to train Chinese astronauts, he said.

Liu was cautious about other declared Chinese goals in space, saying a scheme to build an orbiting space station "could be 10 years down the road" and any lunar mission also lay in the distant future.

The first Shenzhou ("Divine Vessel") flew in November 1999. The second and third missions took place in January 2001 and March 2002 respectively.

SPACE.WIRE