Chinese space officials are reportedly ready to loft an unpiloted Shenzhou IV spacecraft - a key test prior to flying a crew next year.

State-controlled news sources -- the Xinhua News Agency and China Daily -- both report Chinese space officials are busily readying Shenzhou IV and its Long March 4F booster for liftoff before year's end.

Hu Hongfu, executive deputy general manager of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), said November 3 that things are progressing smoothly in readying the fourth unpiloted craft for blastoff.

In August, Zhang Qingwei, president of CASC was quoted as stating that plans call for launching Shenzhou IV (meaning Divine Vessel IV) "in the remaining months of this year."

China has conducted three unmanned Shenzhou shakeout flights in the 1999-2002 time period. The first vessel was launched in November 1999; the second in January 2001; and a third craft flew in March 2002.

On the last Shenzhou flight, the return section of the spacecraft carried mannequins. They were successfully recovered April 1 after a weeklong voyage, part of an assortment of different payloads carried by Shenzhou III.

An exhibit sponsored by China at last month's World Space Congress in Houston noted that 44 payload experiments, including crystal growing studies to Earth imaging, were flown on the Shenzhou III mission.

In a paper presented at the World Space Congress, Guoting Wu of the Beijing Institute of Spacecraft System Engineering, China has come up with a new kind of reentry material for Shenzhou vehicles.

China has fabricated for Shenzhou special thermal protection shielding. This heat-resistant shielding offers a 35 percent reduction in weight contrasted to materials used on Russian spacecraft, Wu noted.