He is one among 500 people, all participants in China's decades-old efforts to reach into space, who are buried at a cemetary near the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern Gansu province, Xinhua news agency reported.

Nie, a marshal in the People's Liberation Army, was a driving force not just in China's space program, but also its endeavors to acquire a nuclear bomb. He died in 1992.

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