China's 'taikonaut' makes safe landing

BEIJING — With parachutes breaking its fall to earth, the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft made a safe landing on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia early this morning, state media reported, completing an apparently successful mission that established China as only the third nation to send a person into space.

State television reported that the touchdown occurred at 6:23 a.m., roughly 21 and a half hours after the spaceship blasted off on Wednesday from the Gobi Desert carrying the nation's first "taikonaut," Yang Liwei, a lieutenant colonel in the Chinese military. Within minutes, grainy images of search teams inspecting the Shenzhou 5 re-entry capsule were televised to the nation. The launch and the landing were not televised live.

The re-entry capsule separated from the propulsion module at 5:35 a.m. and began descending toward earth, according to the official New China News Agency. State television reported that the capsule entered China's air space at roughly 6 a.m. and continued its descent to the ground.

Yang, who is expected to become China's newest hero, took a short congratulatory telephone call from the Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao. The 38-year-old astronaut was reported to be in "good spirits."

The safe landing meant that China could claim standing as one of the world's leading spacefaring nations at a time when the U.S. shuttle program remains grounded following the Columbia crash and the Russian program is suffering from budget restraints. India and Japan, while offering congratulations to China, are now racing to join the manned space club.

"It's significant that we now have a third nation to send a man into space," said Roger Launius, the former chief historian for NASA. But Launius noted that the mission was making few waves in the United States and Russia, where sending astronauts into the near-orbit of the earth has been commonplace.

In China, though, the Shenzhou 5, or Divine Vessel, has carried great political and symbolic significance for a nation eager to be regarded as a technologically advanced and modern.

The mission also carried enormous political risks, since an unsuccessful outcome would have been seen as a devastating failure of China's new political leadership. Instead, top leaders hope to bask in some of the mission's reflected glory.

Throughout Wednesday, the government-run state television network, CCTV, provided exhaustive coverage of the orbiting spacecraft, a marked contrast to the scant information provided before the launch. By the end of the day, the formerly obscure Yang was all over television and the Internet.