CHINA
SPACE FLIGHT
So
far the United States and Russia are the only two countries to have
successfully launched humans into space. China is getting closer to
being the third.
On Sunday,
November 21, 1999, China announced that it launched and recovered a
test spacecraft. This test spacecraft was unmanned but indicates that
China could place people in space in the near future.
The unmanned
space capsule is called "Shenzhou" or "God Ship". "Shenzhou" was in
space for a total of 21 hours and flew around the earth 14 times. It
then used braking rockets and a parachute to land back on earth in Mongolia.
China sent
its first rocket into space in 1959 and its first satellite orbited
the earth in 1970. China's manned space program is known as Project
921. This recent accomplishment puts China one step closer to sending
a man or woman into space.
