China, welcome to the space club!

The Chinese space mission, which came 42 years after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and American Alan Shepard became the first men in space, was expected to last 21 hours. The capsule, containing the astronaut, known as a taikonaut or yunhangyuan in Chinese, is scheduled to touch down near the Jiuchuan launch station in the Gobi Desert, 1,000 miles west of Beijing.

State media identified the taikonaut as Lt. Col. Yang Liwei, from Manchuria. Yang was described as an athletic former fighter pilot who has an 8-year-old son, likes swimming and skating, and has not seen his younger brother or elder sister in three years while he prepared to become China’s first man in space.

Minutes after the launch, a state television announcer said the space capsule and Yang had “entered orbit at 9:10″ Wednesday morning. The New China News Agency said Yang “looked composed and at ease.”

“I feel good,” Yang radioed back from space after 34 minutes in flight.

If successful, the journey of the manned capsule would mark a great step for China in its goal to become a major space explorer for both military and civilian purposes. The space program also underscores China’s desire to become recognized as an emerging great power. Chinese scientists have vowed recently that the country would send a rocket to the moon, establish a space station, ring the globe with high-precision satellites and explore the possibility of extracting the moon’s mineral wealth, particularly helium-3, a potential energy source.

Source: Washington Post