Beijing  - China has finished production of a spacecraft for a planned mission in October that will include the country's first space walk by an astronaut, state media said on Thursday.

All preparations were making "smooth progress" for the planned mission in October of Shenzhou VII, China's third manned space flight, the semi-official China News Service quoted an unnamed spokesperson for the astronautical engineering team as saying.

Production of the Shenzhou VII spacecraft was completed, and ground tests were carried out for activities outside the craft and interfacing between the modules, the spokesperson said.

The three crew members and three back-up astronauts had all completed theoretical and technical training for operations outside the spacecraft.

The next period of training would focus on simulations of operations outside spacecraft, and strengthening the six astronauts' knowledge of the functioning of space suits and air-locks, docking manoeuvres and working in near-zero gravity, the agency said.

The Shenzhou VII is scheduled to be launched from the Jiuquan space centre in the north-western province of Gansu.

Two of the three astronauts on the mission will transfer to a separate orbital module and one of them will leave the capsule to make the space walk, the spokesperson was quoted as saying.

The third astronaut will apparently remain in the re-entry module.

In 2003, China's Shenzhou V mission made it the third country to launch an astronaut into space after Russia and the United States

The government released plans in 2000 for a programme to build an integrated ground-space network for space exploration and manned space research, including a permanent space laboratory by 2020.

The Shenzhou VI mission in October 2005 carried two astronauts who conducted tests including transfers between the re-entry and orbital modules, changes out of their space suits and movements inside the two capsules. (dpa)