Beijing, Oct. 11 -- China's second manned spacecraft is to be launched between 8:00am and 9:00am Wednesday morning Beijing time from a major space center in its northwestern Gansu Province, after a crucial ruling Communist Party meeting concludes in Beijing on Tuesday.

The Shenzhou VI will carry two astronauts into the orbit from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, Xinhua news agency said.

The craft is expected to land at a site in central Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Two astronauts from a pool of six candidates will be chosen by a panel of experts late Tuesday or early Wednesday to aboard the spaceship and stay in out space for a planned 6 days.

Zhai Zhigang and Nie Haisheng are favorites to pilot the mission, according to reports of local media.

Final preparations for the launch are going smoothly, the Xinhua news agency said.

A top-ranking state leader is expected to be on the scene to see the two astronauts off into the sky at the launch site. Colonel Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut who orbited Earth 14 times on the Shenzhou V craft in October 2003, has already arrived at Jiuquan city. Chinese President Hu Jintao flew to Jiuquan in 2003 to see Yang off.

China’s state-owned Central Television Station will telecast the launch live.

Wang Yongzhi, chief designer of China's manned space flight program, said the two astronauts on Shenzhou-VI will for the first time enter into the orbital module from the re-entry capsule and live and work several days under micro-gravity conditions.

They will also for the first time carry out "scientific experiments with human participation in its real sense" in space.

Liu Yu, commander in chief of the rocket system, said the rocket for Shenzhou-VI has much improvement in reliability and safety compared with the one for Shenzhou-V. "We have confidence in the quality of this rocket. We have the conditions and capability to fulfill this mission," Liu said.

"The Chinese should be very proud of what they are accomplishing," AFP quoted David Baker, a London-based space policy analyst for Jane's Defence Weekly, as saying. "It's the kind of activity that only a developed and well-organized industrial nation can pull off."

While the Shenzhou technology is based on 1950s and 1960s Soviet science, analysts said it would be wrong to shrug off China's space program.

"If it was easy, China wouldn't be the third country with a manned program," said Joan Johnson-Freese, an expert on China's space program at the US Naval War College.

"The technology isn't exactly breakthrough technology, but being able to put it all together and make it work, is sending a message that in fact China has integration skills, it has follow-through capability to build this kind of technology."

The Shenzhou spacecraft, based on the robust and thoroughly tested Soviet design for the Soyuz vessel, is basically the same this time as two years ago.

It consists of three modules -- the orbital module where scientific experiments are carried out; the re-entry capsule where the astronauts will spend most of their time; and the service module, which contains fuel and air, solar panels and other technical gear.

During his 21-hour trip to space in 2003, Yang never left the re-entry capsule, but this time will be different.

The two astronauts will enter into the orbital module in the front to conduct a large number of tests, presumably designed to check their physical reactions to conditions in space.

"This is very, very typical of the Chinese space program," said Brian Harvey, the Dublin-based author of a book on China's space endeavors. "They go quite a big step each time. They very rarely repeat missions."

"The answer really lies in prestige first, direct economic and social applications second, and using the space program as a cutting-edge tool for technology third," said Harvey.

"China will never be a superpower, but as the world's biggest developing country with 1.3 billion people, it should have a place in aerospace development and make due contributions," Wang Yongzhi, chief designer of the national manned space flight program, was quoted as saying.