YOU just had to look at the menu to see there was something different about this space mission. Gone were the peanut butter and jelly tortillas, the turkey salads and butterscotch pudding. Instead, astronaut Yang Liwei dined on freeze-dried shredded pork with garlic sauce and fried rice, washed down with tea. China had arrived in space.
Its historic first human space flight ended safely on 16 October when the 38-year-old air force officer landed on the grassy plains of Inner Mongolia.
To send Yang into space, no technological breakthroughs were needed beyond those the US and Soviet Union made four decades ago. Yet the mission marks a shift of the balance of power in space.
China hailed the achievement as a symbol of its rapid technological progress and promised another manned flight before the end of 2005. Official congratulations flooded in from NASA and the European and Russian space agencies, ...
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