Shenzhou VII Locks In For Return To Earth After Space Walk

BEIJING, Sept 28 (Bernama) - The Shenzhou VII space mission that pulled off China's first spacewalk has entered into the journey back to earth and can expect a euphoric welcome on Sunday evening.

The return capsule carrying astronaut Zhai Zhigang, who performed the historic feat, and two other astronauts will touch down at about 5.40pm in the steppes of central Inner Mongolia, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Set to be the new poster space hero is Zhai whose image has dominated newspapers and repeatedly replayed on television waving China's red national flag in space after slipping out of the space capsule on Saturday evening.

The 42-year-old former fighter pilot, as with all Chinese astronauts, is the first generation of China's 14 space explorers picked in 1998 for the country's ambition to mark its presence in space and build its own space station by 2020.

Zhai and fellow crew, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng blasted off in a Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan satellite launch centre in northwestern Gansu Province on Thursday.

President Hu Jintao met the astronauts before their trip at the launch centre and spoke to them again from the Beijing Aerospace Centre after their achievement.

"The successful extra vehicular activity symbolises China has achieved a new breakthrough on manned space missions. All three of you have made a great contribution to China's undertaking of space technology," he said.

Another triumph lauded has been the China-made "Feitian" (lying in the sky) spacesuit worn by Zhai, a 10-layer outfit costing 30 million yuan (RM13.7 million) and weighing 120kg suit.

Shenzhou VII was China's third manned space mission after Shenzhou V which took off with solo astronaut Yang Liwei, now a national hero, and the subsequent Shenzhou VI flight with two other astronauts in 2005.

China's next step is to start work by 2010 to put together a space laboratory and by 2020 to build its own space station.

The country's space march will demand more astronauts and a spokesman, Wang Zhaoyao, told newsmen after the spacewalk that research had begun on developing woman astronauts.

China's astronaut training chief engineer Deng Yibing said a second selection of astronauts will be held after the Shenzhou VII mission.

Xinhua quoted Deng as saying that a fresh team may be involved in the Shenzhou X mission, which will seek another breakthrough in orbiter docking technology.

Some of the present group of astronauts, with average age of 40, may already be too old by then.

The eighth and ninth Shenzhou (meaning "divine vessel" in Chinese) missions will be unmanned to test docking technology first, Xinhua quoted Li Yuqing, a consultant of the Shenzhou VII mission as saying.

-- BERNAMA