Beijing: Three Chinese astronauts arrived in Beijing to a joyful homecoming parade today, after returning from a mission that included China's first spacewalk and put the country closer to building a space station and landing a man on the moon.

State broadcaster CCTV showed the three, with flower garlands around their neck, waving and smiling as they were slowly driven through the streets at the Beijing Aerospace Center, where they did their space training. Holding up Chinese flags and balloons, hundreds of people, many of them uniformed soldiers, cheered and applauded as the astronauts went by, with some shouting out, 'Learn from the astronauts and salute the astronauts.'

One banner read: 'Warmly celebrate the great success of the task of the Shenzhou manned space flight.' The success of the mission now shifts the focus to building the space station and plans to land a man on the moon, said Wang Zhaoyao, deputy director of manned space flight. He said the program is looking to launch a new orbiting vehicle and set up a simple space lab by 2011. There are also hopes of sending unmanned and manned space vehicles to perform docking activities with the target vehicle.

By 2020,China wants to launch a manned mission to experiment with technologies that will enable astronauts to take care of spacecraft for longer periods of time, Wang told reporters at a briefing in Beijing after a parachute brought the astronauts capsule back to ground Sunday. After we have successfully completed these three steps, we will go to even more remote areas, Wang said, adding China hopes to send a manned mission to the moon in the near future.

Source : PTI