Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut and deputy chief of China's Manned Space Agency, said at a press conference of the annual meeting of the Association of Space Explorers that after the launch of the Tiangong-2 space lab around 2016, the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft and Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft will be launched to dock with it. Yang announced an ambitious space program timetable building up to the country establishing its first space station by 2022. Around 2018, a core experimental space module will be launched ahead of the space station being completed in about eight years' time, according to Yang. (GONG LEI)