The Shenzhou IV (Divine Vessel IV) craft should follow hot on the heels of March's successful Shenzhou III mission, senior space officials told the China Daily.

"We have intensified development of the Shenzhou IV and its carrier rocket, which we plan to launch some time in the remaining months of the year," Zhang Qingwei, head of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., told the paper.

If the fourth mission was a success, "a manned space mission would be just around the corner", a separate source close to China's space programme told the English language daily, which splashed the news across its front page.

However Shenzhou IV might end up not leaving the launch pad until next year, warned the anonymous source.

China has made no secret of its burning ambition to become the third nation following the United States and the former Soviet Union to put a human into space, with even greater goals targeted after that.

In May, state press reported a longer-term plan to establish a base on the moon in order to exploit its mineral resources.

The timetable for dispatching China's first astronaut -- or taikonaut as some space enthusiasts call them, using the Chinese characters "taikong" meaning space or cosmos -- is unclear.

The country's space programme is shrouded in secrecy, although officials did talk in April of sending up a manned mission within two years.

Last month a Pentagon report said this could happen even within the next 18 months, and that China plans to eventually build a reusable space vehicle similar to the US space shuttle.

Shenzhou III was launched on March 25, with the re-entry vehicle successfully returning to China's northern Inner Mongolia region a week later.

Last month its orbital vehicle completed 100 days in orbit, doing around 3,000 manoeuvres as commanded by ground controllers, state press said.

China set up its manned space program in 1992, and the first experimental Shenzhou craft was launched in November 1999, returning to earth the next day.

The Shenzhou II was launched on January 10, 2001, with the re-entry module orbiting the earth 108 times in six days, while an orbital module remained in orbit for nine months, successfully performing a series of tests.

The Shenzhou II module's return was greeted by a press blackout that left Western analysts suspecting a re-entry failure. Chinese officials denied this.

SPACE.WIRE