A crew of three Chinese astronauts, including the country's youngest-ever, docked early Saturday at the Tiangong space station, accompanied by four lab mice.

The Shenzhou-21 spaceship docked at 3:22 am (1922 GMT Friday), China's state news agency Xinhua reported.

That was about three-and-a-half hours after the spaceship departed from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, powered aloft by a Long March-2F rocket.

The Tiangong space station -- crewed by teams of three astronauts that are exchanged every six months -- is the crown jewel of China's space programme, into which billions of dollars have been poured in a bid to catch up with the United States and Russia.

China has bold plans to send a crewed mission to the Moon by the end of the decade and eventually to build

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