China has begun to work on standards to select women taikonauts, Chinese term for astronauts, for future space missions, an official with the China Space Center said.

Chen Shanguang, director of the China Astronaut Research and Training Center, or simply China Space Center, said that women taikonauts are being trained to carry out space missions.

Studies about the impact of space flight on women have been initiated, he said. And a large number of experiments will be conducted to tell the differences between men and women in space.

As women taikonauts have different requirements about environment and life ensurence in a spacecraft, Chinese researchers will have to make extensive studies, such as developing new space suits and devices to collect the excrement of women.

China's Air Force Aeronautics University welcomed 35 women pilot trainees for the eighth time in July this year. Experts say the country's first group of female fighter pilots may grow out of them and the first female Chinese taikonaut may be selected.

"My dream is to become China's first female fighter pilot and first female taikonaut," said Tao Jiali, a student from southwest China's Sichuan Province to the university

(Xinhua News Agency October 15, 2005)