[新闻] 美国媒体对我国成功回收神舟4号飞船的报道（英文）

Report: Unmanned Chinese Spacecraft Returns to Earth
By Christopher Bodeen
Associated Press Writer
posted: 09:30 am ET
05 January 2003


BEIJING (AP) -- An unmanned Chinese space capsule landed Sunday after orbiting the Earth for a week in what officials said was a step toward a manned flight later this year, state media reported.

The Shenzhou IV capsule landed as planned Sunday evening on the northern grasslands of China's Inner Mongolia region, the official Xinhua News Agency and state television said.

China's manned space program is a key prestige project for the communist government. A successful manned flight would make this only the third country, after Russia and the United States, able to put a human in space on its own.

Recovery teams had been deployed across snow-covered northwestern China for the return of the Shenzhou IV, which blasted into space Dec. 30 from a base in the Gobi desert, state newspapers said.

``The spaceship landed successfully in the middle part'' of Inner Mongolia, Xinhua said. The reports didn't give any other details or the time of the landing.

Chinese space officials have said the mission was likely to be the final test run of a craft identical to the one planned for manned flight. Officials said that if no problems were reported, the government planned to send up a manned flight in the second half of 2003.

The Shenzhou IV, whose name means ``Sacred Vessel,'' carried all the equipment for manned flight, and the mission tested life-support and other systems, scientists said.

The flight was the second in less than 10 months for a Chinese space capsule _ the shortest period to date between launches and a possible sign of growing official confidence.

All systems aboard were functioning normally, and further safety improvements were made as the craft orbited Earth, newspapers and Xinhua said, quoting Chinese scientists.

Plans had called for the ship's re-entry vehicle to disengage from its orbiter at about 7:00 p.m. (1100 GMT) Sunday, reduce speed and enter a lower orbit, the Beijing Times reported, quoting an unidentified specialist with the space program.

The capsule was to have broken away from its propulsion vehicle and be guided back into Earth's atmosphere by ground control, the paper said.

Previous Shenzhou capsules have parachuted down to landings on Inner Mongolia's grasslands.

State media have been filled for the past week with reports about preparations for manned flight -- a goal of China's space program since at least the early 1970s.

The Shenzhou and other Chinese space equipment are based on Russian technology, with extensive modifications.

A corps of about a dozen astronauts picked from air force fighter pilots have been training for years to make the first space flights.

Called ``taikonauts'' after the Chinese word for space, they have trained in a Shenzhou capsule. At least two were sent to Russia for training.

China has cast its space program as a symbol of national pride, much as the United States did with NASA's Apollo launches during the ``space race'' of the 1960s against the Soviet Union.

Last week, President Jiang Zemin called for the Chinese program's continuing development, saying the latest launch was a ``great victory'' and implying that manned flights weren't far off.