On Sunday, the three Chinese astronauts on board the Shenzhou-9 manually docked their spacecraft to the Tiangong 1, an orbiting space lab.

On the same day, a Chinese manned submersible vehicle set a deep-diving record when it descended 7,020 meters into the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean.
The three men on board the sub -- dubbed oceanauts in China -- sent greetings to the three astronauts on the Shenzhou-9 space craft.

"We wish for a great success of the manual docking and brilliant achievements in China's manned space and manned deep-sea dive causes," Xinhua quoted Ye Cong, Li Kaizhou and Yang Bo as saying. 

Both endeavors have been a source of pride for China and could help bolster support for the Chinese Communist Party as it undergoes a once-in-a-decade leadership transition later this year and handles the fall-out from the demise of former politician Bo Xilai.

"Scientific achievements like this allow the Party to again remind the population of what has been achieved under their leadership," said Dean Cheng, a research follow at The Heritage Foundation in Washington.

"It buys credibility and justification for their continued rule, even as scandals like Bo Xilai eat away at their authority