China lets public watch latest space launch

China exulted at its second manned space flight today after the government eased its secrecy and showed the launch of two astronauts on live television, scoring a success in a costly programme that communist leaders hope will win them respect abroad and public support at home.

Schoolchildren in Shanghai watched in class and hundreds of people gathered around a giant video screen at Beijing’s main railway station to see astronauts Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng blast off from a base in China’s Gobi desert.

“I am feeling really emotional,” said a construction worker at the Beijing train station. “This is a proud moment – not only for China, but for Chinese people all over the world, and for humankind.”

The flight came two years after China launched its first astronaut into orbit in October 2003, becoming only the third nation able to send a human into space on its own, after Russia and the US.

None of that flight was broadcast live, apparently out of fear that something might go wrong. But today, Chinese viewers were allowed to see the lift-off and live scenes of Fei and Nie in their cockpit as they roared skyward. A camera attached to the outside of the rocket showed the ground dropping away.

The manned space programme is a key prestige project for the communist government. Chinese leaders hope that patriotic pride at its triumphs will shore up their standing amid wrenching economic change and public anger at corruption and a growing gap between rich and poor.

Abroad, the government is eager to project an image of China as a rising power with technological and cultural prowess to match its stunning economic growth of the past two decades.

President Hu Jintao and other Communist Party leaders were shown watching the launch from a Beijing command centre, while Premier Wen Jiabao was at the Gobi Desert launch base.

“China’s aerospace science experiments are completely for peaceful purposes. It is also a contribution to human science and the cause of peace,” Wen said. “We would like, together with the world’s peoples, to make progress hand-in-hand for peaceful use of outer-space.”

The secrecy surrounding the 2003 launch blunted the event’s value as a propaganda event. Many Chinese said they felt little connection to the launch, and when the Shenzhou 5 capsule was displayed in Beijing after its return from orbit, it attracted only modest crowds.

But the decision to engage the public by shoing today’s launch already appeared to be paying dividends.

At the Xiang Ming Middle School in Shanghai, students in teacher Feng Qiang’s science class watched on a projection TV and cheered when the capsule reached orbit. They held up handpainted signs saying, My heart takes flight, and Celebrate the successful launch.

“It’s a very great day for our country,” said 15-year-old Seymour Lee. “It feels like we’ve been waiting 50 years for it.”

The mission this week is expected to be longer, more complex and possibly riskier than the 2003 flight, which carried one person and lasted just 21 1/2 hours.

The government did not say how long Fei and Nie would stay aloft, but news reports said it could be three to five days. The official Xinhua News Agency reported that they had food and water for a week.

State television broadcast updates throughout the day, showing more live scenes of the astronauts – known in Chinese as yuhangyuan, or travellers of the universe – taking off their bulky, 22lb spacesuits and moving around their cabin.

Both Fei, 41, and Nie, who celebrates his 41st birthday tomorrow, are military officers, former fighter pilots and Communist Party members.

Xinhua said both men talked to their families from orbit.

“May you carry out the task entrusted to you by the motherland and return smoothly,” Fei’s wife, Wang Jie, was quoted as saying. The report said Nie’s wife wished him luck, and “at these words, Nie Haisheng was in tears.”

The Shenzhou – or Divine Vessel – capsule is based on Russia’s workhorse Soyuz, though with extensive modifications. China also bought technology for spacesuits, life-support systems and other equipment from Moscow, though officials say all of the items launched into space are Chinese-made.

China has had a rocket programme since the 1950s and fired its first satellite into orbit in 1970. It regularly launches satellites for foreign clients aboard its giant Long March boosters.

Chinese space officials say they hope to land an unmanned probe on the Moon by 2010 and want to launch a space station.