In a milestone for Chinas space programme, three astronauts boarded the country's orbiting Tiangong 1 space module on 18 June. Their flight on the Shenzhou 9 craft was the country's fourth manned space launch, but is the first of a series of missions in efforts to build a manned space station, the Tiangong ('Heavenly Palace'), by 2020 (see Nature 473,14-15; 2011). The mission carried Chinas first female astronaut, Liu Yang. See go.nature.com/f5qkka for more.
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