Orbiting about 350 kilometers above the Earth, the two astronauts on Shenzhou VI said they were "feeling well" yesterday and everything was going according to plan.

Colonel Fei Junlong and Colonel Nie Haisheng uncovered the face shields on their spacesuits and waved to the millions of people watching their mission on TV.

Fei and Nie will live and work in space for about 119 hours. The duo will eat much better than China's first man in space, thanks to a new heater that allows them to eat warm meals.

Medical experts designed a special diet for the two astronauts, including about 50 different foods. Fei and Nie will eat three meals every day, which have been nutritionally balanced and designed for their respective tastes.

According to Chen Bin, head of the Space Nutrition and Foodstuff Research Office, the two astronauts will eat five to six dishes at each meal.

More than 40 kilograms of food was prepared for the flight.

Rice will be the major staple food, with 140 grams of rice packed into a vacuum bag to be warmed during the flight. Non-staple foods include beef cooked with preserved orange peels, beef and cuttle balls and dehydrated vegetables.

The astronauts have instant coffee, green tea, and orange juice to drink. They also have soup.

Dehydrated, refrigerated fruits provided for them include strawberries, apples, bananas, peaches and Hami melons.

The two astronauts will take turns resting in a sleeping bag attached to the wall of the vessel's orbit module. Under the microgravity conditions, they may sleep standing, sitting or lying.

When they sleep, they should put their arms inside the sleeping bag and tie their hands to their chests, so they don't touch equipment switches accidentally.

Russian cosmonauts have said that while sleeping in a microgravity environment, a person will often feel as if his legs and arms have separated from his body.

Once sleepy cosmonaut hallucinated that his arm was a foreign object floating toward him. The illusion reportedly left them in a cold sweat of fear.

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