China's third unmanned spacecraft, Shenzhou III, landed safely in
central Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Monday afternoon, after
orbiting the earth 108 times in slightly less than a week.
The craft, which lifted off from Jiuquan in northwest China's Gansu
Province last Monday night, landed at 4:51 pm after successfully
conducting a chain of flight and scientific experiments over a
period of 162 hours, said Hu Shixiang, vice-director of China's
national manned space program.
President Jiang Zemin, who is now on an inspection tour outside
Beijing, sent a message of congratulations on the successful return
of Shenzhou III in a telephone call to Cao Gangchuan, head of the
General Armaments Department of the Chinese People's Liberation
Army and chief director of the national manned spacecraft
program.
Jiang expressed congratulations on the successful launch, normal
operation and safe return of the space vehicle.
Jiang, who is also general-secretary of the Communist Party of
China, encouraged all those who are participating in the program to
work even harder, in order to ensure the success of the upcoming
launch of the fourth spaceship and subsequent space program
activities.
The president was at Jiuquan when the space vehicle was launched on
March 25.
The metabolic simulation apparatus, human physical monitoring
sensors and dummy astronauts installed aboard the spaceship worked
well, indicating China's spacecraft environment control and life
support system is ready for manned space flights, said a spokesman
at the Beijing Aerospace Direction and Control Center, the nerve
hub of China's space program.
The spokesman, who preferred not to be identified, did not say when
such a manned flight will be realized.
At
4:03 pm Monday, when Shenzhou III was flying over the north
Atlantic, Yuanwang III, one of China's four vessels stationed at
sea around the world to track the space mission, signaled to the
spacecraft to return to earth.
The returning module then detached itself from the orbital module
to return to its preset destination in Inner Mongolia, according to
the spokesman.
The orbital module will continue circling the earth for several
months, according to scientists at the Beijing center.
A
team from the Xi'an Satellite Monitoring Center in northwest
China's Shaanxi Province locates the capsule after it landed.
Scientists opened the recovery capsule at the landing site, and
removed a cell reflector and protein crystal device, which were
taken to a special plane immediately and flown to Beijing,
according to the spokesman.
The returned capsule will be transported to Beijing within a couple
of days, where scientists will analyze and study scientific
instruments and experimental samples carried in the capsule.
Already scientists conducted biological, space material, space
astronomy, space physics and micro gravity research experiments
when the spacecraft was in orbit, he said.
Like the previous two Shenzhou spacecraft, the Shenzhou III was
made by the Chinese Academy of Space Technology and the Shanghai
Research Institute of Astronautical Technology, and was blasted
into space aboard China's powerful Long March 2F rocket.
Since 1999, China has successfully launched and recovered three
unmanned spacecraft, paving the way for China to become only the
third nation in history to launch a human being into space --
following Russia, which was the first, and the United States.
(China
Daily April 2, 2002)