China's Shenzhou-21 crewed spaceship successfully blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Friday Oct. 31.

Three astronauts were on board headed for the orbiting space station for a six-month mission.

The spaceship, atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket, lifted off at 11:44 pm Beijing Time.

On board are Mission commander Zhang Lu and astronauts Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang.

About 3.5 hours later, the Shenzhou-21 will have an automated rendezvous and docking with the front port of the space station core module Tianhe.

It will form a combination of three modules and three spacecraft.

The Shenzhou-21 is the 37th flight mission of China's manned space program.

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