Chinese astronauts returned to earth and emerged triumphant from their capsule Sunday after successfully completing the country’s first spacewalk mission.
State broadcaster CCTV showed the Shenzhou 7 spaceship landing under clear skies in the grasslands of China’s northern Inner Mongolia region at 5:37 p.m. local time.
Premier Wen Jiabao applauded at mission control in Beijing.
The spacewalk was mainly aimed at testing China’s mastery of the technology involved.
A successful spacewalk paves the way for assembling a space station from two Shenzhou orbital modules, the next major goal of China’s manned spaceflight program.
China is also pursuing lunar exploration and may attempt to land a man on the moon in the next decade – possibly ahead of NASA’s 2020 target date for returning to the moon.
Brief by The Associated Press