BEIJING, Oct 12: China’s second manned spacecraft blasted off from a remote northwestern launch site on Wednesday, two years after the country joined an elite club of space powers.

An elated Premier Wen Jiabao and other leaders were in Jiuquan to witness the launch, which has raised China’s astronautic profile alongside new-found diplomatic and economic clout.

“You will once again show that the Chinese people have the will, confidence and capability to mount scientific peaks ceaselessly,” the official Xinhua news agency quoted Mr Wen as telling the astronauts.

Fei Junlong, 40, and Nie Haisheng, 41, colonels in the People’s Liberation Army, were handpicked from 14 fighter pilots and had been in the running for China’s first manned space launch in 2003.

“There is nothing to worry about,” state television quoted the pair as saying before Shenzhou VI lifted off as light snow fell. “We will accomplish the mission resolutely. See you in Beijing.”

“I feel good,” Mr Fei, a native of China’s richest city, Kunshan, said minutes after the blast-off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre, deep in the desert of the northwestern province of Gansu.

State television broadcast the lift-off live and showed the pair inside the Shenzhou capsule waving at the camera after the spacecraft entered orbit.

They later showed the pair flipping through flight manuals and pushing buttons by computer screens.

The capsule, based on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft developed in the late 1960s and still in service, is due to touch down in the remote northern region of Inner Mongolia on Monday.

In the Chinese capital, President Hu Jintao and Vice President Zeng Qinghong watched the lift-off at the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Centre.—Reuters