After nearly 2 weeks in space, China's first female astronaut and two other crew members have returned to Earth.
The Shenzhou 9 space mission has parachuted safely back into the grasslands of Inner Mongolia after a 13-day mission to the Tiangong 1 orbiting module. The safe arrival of the crew, including the China's first female astronaut, Liu Yang, marked a major stride in the developing nation's ambitious space program.
The down-to-earth Liu Yang emerged smiling and waving from the shuttle to overwhelming ranks of television reporters and journalists and reported her time in the Tiangong 1 space station was “comfortable and pleasant.”
Chen Shanguang, director for the Chinese Astronaut Research and Training Centre, has announced that astronauts are already being selected for the Shenzhou 10 mission, which will expand on the efforts of the previous mission. While enthusiastic, the centre remains nervous and usually each manned mission has a time gap of several years.
The overall cost of the space program has risen exponentially and, by the time the next Shenzhou mission is complete, the government will have spent an additional 19 billion yuan ($3 billion) on the project. Revealing the program's budget is highly unusual for the space centre, whose close ties with a secretive military normally shroud their activities in secrecy.