China's three astronauts have spent their first day in orbit preparing for the mission's spacewalk.
A 42-year-old fighter pilot, Zhai Zhigang, is due to carry out the 20-minute manoeuvre at 1630 Beijing Time (0830 GMT) on Saturday.
It will be the first time Chinese yuhangyuan (astronauts) have ventured outside their spacecraft.
Their Shenzhou VII capsule soared into orbit on a Long March II-F rocket from Jiuquan spaceport in north-west China.
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Mr Zhai is joined on the mission by two other "yuhangyuan" - Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng.
Zhang Jianqi, one of the chief engineers for China's space programme, said keeping three men in the spacecraft, and then sending one outside, would be a "big test".
"This is a big technological leap," he told state-run news agency Xinhua.
"The risks are quite high. Sending up three astronauts is a jump both in quantity and quality."
When Mr Zhai carries out his extra-vehicular activity (EVA), he is expected to wear a Chinese-made spacesuit thought to have cost between Ј5m and Ј20m ($10m-$40m).
The yuhanguan will be tethered to the capsule with a cable that provides him with life support and a communications link with the spacecraft.
His back-up, Mr Liu, will monitor the activity, presumably to reel the spacewalker back inside if there is an emergency.
Mr Zhai will retrieve an externally mounted experiment and oversee the release of a satellite.
At the end of the mission, the Shenzhou re-entry capsule will target a landing in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
China became only the third nation after the United States and Russia to independently put a man in space when Yang Liwei, another fighter pilot, went into orbit on the Shenzhou V mission in October 2003.
Two years later, Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng completed a five-day flight on Shenzhou VI.
According to the Associated Press, China's official news agency posted an article on its website prior to the lift-off that was written as if Shenzhou VII had already been launched into space.
The article reportedly carried a date of 27 September and came complete with a dialogue between the astronauts.
Chinese media report that this latest mission is the "most critical step" in the country's "three-step" space programme.
These stages are: sending a human into orbit, docking spacecraft together to form a small laboratory and, ultimately, building a large space station.
The Shenzhou VIII and IX missions are expected to help set up a space laboratory complex in 2010.
China launched an unmanned Moon probe last year about one month after rival Japan blasted its own lunar orbiter into space.
(BBC)
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