Engineers to be among nation's next astronauts

China will start to recruit and train the third generation of its astronauts beginning next year and will turn engineers into space fliers, a senior space scientist said on Friday.

Huang Weifen, deputy research head of the Astronaut Center of China, revealed the plan at a news conference in Beijing about three hours after two Chinese astronauts returned to Earth from their monthlong space journey.

"We have finalized the plan," she said.