China announced yesterday that it had put a craft capable of carrying a person into space and brought it back to earth safely after 21 hours. It now hopes to put a crew into space next year, thus becoming only the third nation after the US and Russia to achieve manned space flight.
The dome-shaped spacecraft was launched on Saturday and orbited the earth 14 times before returning yesterday morning to a landing site in Inner Mongolia, the official Xinhua news agency reported. State television showed the spacecraft Shenzhou launched by a Long March rocket which blasted off from the Jiuquan satellite launch centre in the north-western province of Gansu at 6.30 a.m. on Saturday (10.30 p.m. Irish time on Friday).
The return module touched down in darkness at 3.30 a.m. on Sunday (7.30 p.m. Irish time on Saturday). Simulated pictures were broadcast of the module descending by parachute and four braking rockets firing shortly before landing.
The breakthrough comes 29 years after China put its first satellite into orbit in 1970 and was greeted with intense pride by Beijingers, who snapped up late editions of official newspapers which were delayed for several hours to carry the story.
"I am very proud of China," said a newspaper seller displaying the Communist Party's official publication, the People's Daily, with a photograph of the launch on the front page. "This shows that we have our own technology to conquer space and we didn't need any American secrets."
The news is a major boost for China's communist government, which last week took a giant step towards entering the World Trade Organisation in negotiations with the US.