Shenzhou 5 Celebrates 10th Anniversary Of Launch

China’s Shenzhou 5 spacecraft celebrates its 10th anniversary. It was the first human spaceflight mission of the Chinese space program, launched on October 15, 2003.

China became the third country in the world to have independent human spaceflight capability after the Soviet Union (later, Russia) and the United States.

Details of Shenzhou-5 spacecraft:

1. The spacecraft was 8.86 meters in total length, and weighed 7,790 kilograms;

2. Its re-entry module, with a diameter of 2.5 meters, has a volume of six cubic meters;

3. Shenzhou-5 was equipped with 52 engines designed to ensure precise readjustment of its attitude and flight maneuvers;

4. Fifty-five latest technologies were used for the first time to build the Long March CZ-2F carrier rocket that sent Shenzhou-5 into space;

5. The rocket had a liftoff mass of 479.8 tons, and the rocket and the craft atop it measure 58.3 meters in height;

6. Shenzhou-5 flied a circular orbit 343 kilometers over the Earth after the orbit shift;

7. It took about 90 minutes for Shenzhou-5 to make a single circle round the Earth, and it stood the test of a temperature gapas great as 180 degrees centigrade in orbit;

8. Nine land-based stations in China and abroad kept tracking the spacecraft during its flight, and four large tracking ships were deployed on the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Indian oceans for the same purpose;

9. Lt. Col. Yang Liwei, China’s first astronaut in space, unfurled a national flag of China’s and a United Nations flag, both made of Nylon and of the same size: 15 cm long, 10 cm wide and 10 grams in weight. Shenzhou-5 also carried a larger UN flag, 180 cm plus 120 cm and weighing 330 grams, which was not unfurled;

10. Shenzhou-5 flew round the Earth 14 times, in a space journey of 600,000 kilometers;

11. Five helicopters and 14 special vehicles had stood by for search and rescue before the spaceship landed;

12. The landing of Shenzhou-5 is just 4.8 kilometers off the target.