• A Chinese spacecraft will blast off from the Gobi Desert on a Long March rocket in the coming days, ferrying three men to an orbiting space module for a three-month stay, the first time China has sent humans into space for nearly five years.

• Shenzhou-12, meaning “Divine Vessel”, will be the third of 11 missions needed to complete China’s space station by 2022.

• Among them, four will be missions with people on board, potentially propelling up to 12 Chinese astronauts into space — more than the 11 men and women that China has sent since 2003.

• The Shenzhou-12 crew is to live on the Tianhe, “Harmony of the Heavens”, a cylinder 16.6 metres (55 feet) long and 4.2 metres (14 feet) in diameter.

• The planned three-month stay would break the country’s record of 30 days, set by the 2016 mission — China’s last crewed flight — of Chen Dong and Jing Haipeng to a prototype station.

• Three men from China’s first and second batches of astronauts will be on this mission.

• China began building its space station in April with the launch of Tianhe, the first and largest of its three modules. This year it aims to send a robotic cargo resupply spacecraft and three more astronauts, this time for a six-month stay.

• China, which aims to become a major spacefaring power by 2030, in May became the second country to put a rover on Mars, two years after landing the first spacecraft on the far side of the moon.

• It also plans to put astronauts on the Moon.

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