The Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern Gansu province was to be sealed off Sunday and refuse access to outsiders ahead of the launch, expected between October 15 and 17, the Chengdu Evening Post reported.

Officials were in particular checking journalists' identifications and would only admit reporting teams carrying letters of invitation from high-level officials, the paper reported.

Interest in the history-making event was nonetheless still high, with hotels in the area reporting no vacancies, it said.

Rooms were twice as expensive as a week earlier and some hotels had resorted to drastic measures to provide more accommodation, such as transforming meeting rooms into makeshift dormitories, according to the paper.

The government has announced that the Shenzhou V manned space vehicle will be launched between October 15 and 17 and orbit the earth 14 times on a 21-hour mission. Landing is scheduled to take place in Inner Mongolia.

If successful, the launch will place China alongside Russia and the United States as the only countries to put a man in space, although China's flight will follow the earliest manned space flights by more than four decades.

SPACE.WIRE