The mission will be China's longest crewed space mission to date and the first in nearly five years, as Beijing pushes forward with its ambitious programme to establish itself as a space power.
The astronauts will spend three months on the Tiangong station, which has separate living modules for each of them as well as a shared bathroom, dining area, and a communication centre to send emails and allow video calls with ground control.
The trio will be able to work off their range of dinner options -- which officials assured reporters were all nutritious and tasty -- on the special treadmills or exercise bikes.
The Long March-2F rocket that will get them there will lift off at 9:22 am local time (0122 GMT) from the Jiuquan launch centre in northwest China's Gobi desert, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said Wednesday.
