CHINA COUNTS DOWN to Thursday space launch. “Last year, China sent its first lunar probe into orbit. China’s longer-term goals include establishing a space station and landing on the moon. On this mission, two of the three ‘taikonauts’ — the Chinese name for astronaut, taken from the Mandarin word for ‘space’ — will don suits ready for a space walk, spokesman Wang told a small group of Chinese and foreign reporters. . . . One taikonaut would wear a Chinese-made suit, and the other a Russian one, Wang said, although it was not clear which would be used on the spacewalk.”