China has decided to build a large zero-gravity water tank to help taikonauts, Chinese term for astronauts, realize space walk.

The training facility to be built will be the fifth zero-gravity water tank in the world and the biggest one in Asia, with a designed volume much larger than that made in Japan with a diameter of 16 meters, Chen Shanguang, head of the China Space Center, told Xinhua Saturday.

Under China's three-step space strategy, Chen said, the next step of China's space programs is to realize space walk outside spacecraft and space docking and to build space labs with human operation in a short run but orbiting independently in the long run.

Chen said that zero-gravity training is classified into two categories, namely aircraft- and water-tank-based ones.

(Xinhua News Agency October 15, 2005)