Rocket scientist and father of China's space technology program, Qian Xuesen has died at the age of 98 in the capital city of Beijing.

Also known as Tsien Hsue-shen, Qian was considered one of the greatest figures of the new field of aeronautics and worked in the US before he was deported at the height of the anticommunist fervor in 1955.

He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later at the California Institute of Technology, where he contributed to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, AP reported.

Qian also helped design ballistic missiles for the US military during World War II and was sent to Europe to examine the captured V-2 rocket technology from Nazi Germany in 1945.

Qian is credited with establishing China's first missile and rocket research institute, developing his country's first nuclear-armed ballistic missiles and working on the first Chinese satellite, launched in 1970.

Although he retired one year before China's manned space program was launched in 1992, his research formed the basis for the Long March CZ-2F rocket that carried astronaut Yang Liwei into orbit in 2003.

TE/HGH