In this photo distributed by the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, the Shenzhou VII manned space craft launches from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China's Gansu province on Thursday. (Li Gang/Xinhua/Associated Press)

China's Shenzou VII spacecraft blasted off Thursday into the night sky from its desert launch pad, beginning the country's third manned space mission in five years.

Army fighter pilots Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng, all 42, were aboard the craft as it lifted off at 9:10 p.m. local time (9:10 a.m. ET) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre, a remote desert launch site in the northwestern Gansu province.

The three taikonauts — the name China gives its astronauts, as derived from the Mandarin word for "space" — are piloting the spacecraft on a 68-hour mission highlighted by China's first attempt at a spacewalk.

Zhai is scheduled to leave the spacecraft on Saturday for 30 minutes and test the Chinese-made "Feitian" spacesuit, which takes its name from a flying Buddhist goddess.

According to reports from Chinese news agencies, more than 30 technologies will be tested during the mission. The taikonauts will also release a small monitoring satellite.

The mission is part of China's ambitious space program, which has goals of establishing a space station, sending people to the moon and a long-range plan of setting up a base there.

In October 2003, China joined the U.S. and the former Soviet Union as just the third country to put a man in space with its own rocket. A second manned space mission sent two more astronauts on a five-day flight in October 2005.