Beijing – A space capsule carrying two Chinese astronauts landed by parachute in the country’s northern grasslands before dawn today following a five-day mission meant to affirm China’s status as an emerging technological power.
Astronauts Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng were “in good health” after their Shenzhou 6 capsule touched down at 4:32 a.m. local time in the Inner Mongolia region, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It said retrieval crews had reached the landing site and that the two men were undergoing a medical checkup.
The two astronauts were shown live on state television climbing out of their kettle-shaped capsule with the help of two technicians in red jumpsuits and climbing down a ladder to the ground. They smiled, waved to cheering members of the retrieval crew, accepted bouquets of flowers and sat in a pair of metal chairs beside the capsule.
“I want to thank the people for their love and care. Thank you very much,” Fei said.
Fei and Nie blasted off Wednesday on China’s second manned space mission. It came almost exactly two years after China’s first manned spaceflight.
China is only the third country to send humans into orbit on its own, after Russia and the U.S. – a source of tremendous national pride as the communist government tries to cement its status as a rising power and help prepare for a moon landing by 2010 and the eventual creation of a space station. Shenzhou means “divine vessel.”
State television showed scores of technicians monitoring the landing on computer screens at a Beijing control center. They showed no reaction when an announcer said the capsule had landed, but they broke into cheers after word came that the astronauts were safe.
Late Sunday, Xinhua said the mission had “accomplished the planned experiments and accumulated valuable technical data” for China’s manned space program.
The craft landed just a half-mile from its target, Xinhua said. Shenzhou 6 orbited the Earth more than 70 times and traveled more than 1.9 million miles, Xinhua said.
The mission was substantially longer and more complex than the 2003 flight, when astronaut Yang Liwei orbited for 21 1/2 hours before his capsule landed by parachute.
The manned space program is a costly prestige project for China’s communist leaders. They hope to burnish the country’s standing abroad and shore up their own support at home by stirring patriotic pride at a time of widespread frustration over corruption and a growing gap between the country’s rich and poor.
