China blasts off
China launched the spacecraft on Tuesday, carrying China's second woman astronaut Wu Yaping and two male astronauts Nie Haisheng and Zhang Xiaoguang into orbit.
It is China's fifth manned space mission and its longest.
The crew will be transported to the Tiangong 1, which functions as an experimental prototype for a much larger Chinese space station to be launched in 2020. The craft will spend 12 days docked with the Tiangong.
China is hoping to join the United States and Russia as the only countries to send independently maintained space stations into orbit. It is already one of just three nations to have launched manned spacecraft on its own.
On the heels of Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield's wildly popular YouTube videos from the International Space Station, the Chinese crew plans to deliver a series of talks to students from aboard the Tiangong.