China is ready for its longest-ever manned space mission with a spacecraft carrying two astronauts set to lift off on Monday to dock with an experimental lab fora month-long stay under the Communist giant's ambitious plans to establish its own permanent space station by 2022.

Chinese astronauts Jing Haipeng, 50, and 37-year-old Chen Dong will be blasted into space aboard 'Shenzhou-11' (heavenly vessel) spacecraft at 7:30 am (5 am IST) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center near the Gobi Desert in northern China.

The mission will be carried out with a Long March-2Fcarrier rocket, Wu Ping, Deputy Director of China's manned space engineering office said.

It will dock with orbiting space lab Tiangong-2 within two days and the astronauts will stay in the lab for 30 days, she was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua news agency.

China, which conducted its first manned space mission in 2003 that lasted 15 days, is putting in billions into its space programme in a bid to catch up with the US and Europe.

Representative image.