An astrophysicist said the country's first civilian female astronaut, who joined the Shenzhou-19 spaceship, will inspire young women to join fields typically dominated by men.

Wang Haoze was among three astronauts who blasted off to the Tiangong space station in the early hours of Wednesday.

Quentin Parker, director of Laboratory for Space Research at the University of Hong Kong, told RTHK's Hong Kong Today programme that having the nation's only female spaceflight engineer onboard is significant towards the development of gender equality among industries.

"We had a couple of missions back, we had the first civilian taikonaut who went up, Professor Gui [Haichao] from Beihang University, in Beijing. He was the first person that wasn't from the Chinese People's Liberation Army to actually go to space... Now we've got the first female flight engineer, which I think is an excellent thing," he said.

"I think, as a role model for young Chinese women aspiring to get into what traditionally has been a male domain of engineering, more and more females are occupying all areas of technology opportunities."

Apart from carrying out 86 science research and technology tests, the trio's mission also includes installing protective devices against space debris.

"Space debris is becoming more and more of an existential threat to everything in low Earth orbit, actually. And what that is, is you're (going to get) the threat of cascading catastrophic collapse of the environment in low Earth orbit," Parker said.

The astrophysicist believes that the Chinese space station, which he said is only a third of a size of the international space station, will be expanded in the next couple of years.