Shenzhou 5

Key facts

Mission & specifications

Mission

Shenzhou 5 made China the third country to launch a human into orbit on its own rocket, joining the Soviet Union and the United States more than four decades after they first did so. On 15 October 2003 the astronaut Yang Liwei — a thirty-eight-year-old fighter pilot, and the first of China's 'taikonauts' to fly — lifted off from the Jiuquan launch centre on the edge of the Gobi Desert aboard a Long March 2F rocket. His bell-shaped Shenzhou capsule, broadly similar in layout to Russia's Soyuz but of Chinese design, circled the Earth fourteen times over about twenty-one hours. The flight was deliberately cautious: a single pilot, a short duration and a heavily tested vehicle, reflecting a programme that had been developed patiently and largely in secret over the previous decade. Yang carried a Chinese flag and a United Nations flag, spoke to his family and to ground controllers, and reported that he could not, in fact, make out the Great Wall from orbit, gently dispelling a long-standing myth. The descent module parachuted down onto the grasslands of Inner Mongolia on 16 October, and Yang emerged a national hero, his face soon on stamps and in schoolbooks. Far more than a single flight, Shenzhou 5 was the foundation of an ambitious human-spaceflight programme: it led on to spacewalks, to dockings, and to the multi-module Tiangong space station now permanently crewed in orbit, with Chinese plans reaching toward the Moon.

1. 2003Launch from JiuquanLaunch

   A Long March 2F carries Yang Liwei aloft on China's first crewed spaceflight.

2. 2003China's first human in orbitMilestone

   China becomes the third nation to launch a person into space on its own.

3. 2003Fourteen orbits of EarthOrbiter

   Yang circles the planet for about twenty-one hours aboard the Shenzhou capsule.

4. 2003Landing in Inner MongoliaLanding

   The descent module parachutes to the grasslands and Yang emerges a national hero.

5. 2021The road to TiangongMilestone

   The programme Shenzhou 5 opened leads to spacewalks, dockings and China's permanent Tiangong station.

Images

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