Launch of Shenzhou 5

Shenzhou 5 was China's first crewed space mission, carrying the astronaut Yang Liwei into orbit on a Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan launch centre. With this flight China became the third country, after the Soviet Union and the United States, to put a person into space using its own technology. Yang spent about twenty-one hours in space and orbited the Earth fourteen times before the capsule landed in Inner Mongolia. He was celebrated as a national hero. The Shenzhou programme went on to include spacewalks and docking with Tiangong space stations, leading to the construction of the permanent Chinese space station.

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