China launches Shenzhou-21 manned spaceship

China's Shenzhou-21 crewed spaceship blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the country's northwest on Friday night, sending three astronauts to its orbiting space station to begin a six-month-long mission.

The spaceship, atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket, lifted off from the launch site at 23:44 (Beijing Time).

The crew members consist of experienced mission commander Zhang Lu and fellow astronauts Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang.

After entering orbit, the Shenzhou-21 spaceship will perform a fast, automated rendezvous and docking with the front port of the space station core module Tianhe in about 3.5 hours, forming a combination of three modules and three spacecraft, said a spokesman with the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) on Thursday.

Shenzhou-21 is the 37th flight mission of China's manned space program and the sixth manned mission during the application and development stage of China's space station.

China launches Shenzhou-21 manned spaceship

China launches Shenzhou-21 manned spaceship

China launches Shenzhou-21 manned spaceship

The U.S. dollar weakened in late trading on Wednesday.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against six major peers, dropped 0.72 percent to 99.142 at 15:00 (1900 GMT).

In late New York trading, the euro increased to 1.1683 dollars from 1.1574 dollars in the previous session, and the British pound was up to 1.3415 dollars from 1.3251 dollars in the previous session.

The U.S. dollar bought 158.51 Japanese yen, lower than 159.73 Japanese yen of the previous session. The U.S. dollar declined to 0.7914 Swiss francs from 0.7988 Swiss francs, and it fell to 1.3849 Canadian dollars from 1.3899 Canadian dollars. The U.S. dollar lost to 9.3069 Swedish kronor from 9.5065 Swedish kronor.

U.S. dollar ticks down