China all ready to send 3 astronauts on its longest-ever crewed space mission

The Shenzhou-13 spaceship is expected to be launched into space on a Long March-2F rocket early Saturday morning from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China. 

Beijing: China is preparing to send three astronauts to live on its space station for six months a new milestone for a program that has advanced rapidly in recent years.

It will be China's longest-ever crewed space mission and set a record for the most time spent in space by Chinese astronauts. The Shenzhou-13 spaceship is expected to be launched into space on a Long March-2F rocket early Saturday morning from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northwestern China.

The first crew who served a 90-day mission aboard the main Tianhe core module of the space station returned in mid-September.