It quoted her as saying that during parachute exercises in the air force: “We girls all cried while singing an inspiring song ‘A Hero Never Dies’ on our way back after the training.”
Mission commander Nie Haisheng, 48, a major-general who will have spent longer in space than any other Chinese astronaut by the time the mission finishes, told the agency: “This is my job and duty. It is an honour for me no matter I am a soldier or a general.”
The third crew member, senior colonel Zhang Xiaoguang, has previously tried for selection for space missions but was not picked, Xinhua said.
“If success is part of our life, so are setbacks. If those who had never failed are winners, so are those who always keep on trying,” it quoted him as saying.
The Shenzhou-10 will dock with the Tiangong-1 – “Heavenly Palace” – space laboratory, and the crew will transfer into it and carry out medical and space technology experiments.
China first sent a human into space only in 2003 and its capabilities still lag behind the US and Russia, but its programme is highly ambitious and includes plans to land a man on the moon and build a station orbiting earth by 2020.
At the same time the United States, long the leader in the field, has scaled back some of its projects, such as retiring its space shuttle fleet.
Independent space analyst Morris Jones, who is based in Sydney, Australia, described the Shenzhou-10 as “more complex than any mission China has attempted before”.
“I think the fact that they’re flying a very long and complex mission shows that China’s astronaut programme has reached a full degree of maturity,” he said.
“They are very steadily laying the groundwork that they will need to build their own space station.”
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