from the gave-up-on-the-attempt-at-a-square-trip dept.
Phys.org is reporting that a Chinese Lunar orbiter completed the return trip to Earth early on Saturday.
The probe landed safely in northern China's Inner Mongolia region, state news agency Xinhua said, citing the Beijing Aerospace Control Center.
The probe, “Xiaofei” or "Little Flyer", was launched on the 23rd of October and spent eight days on a 520,000 mile (840,000 km) round trip to the moon and back, as a test run for China's next Lunar mission.
The military-run space project, which has plans for a permanent orbiting station by 2020 and eventually to send a human to the moon, is also seen as evidence of the ruling Communist Party's success in turning around the fortunes of the once poverty-stricken nation.
The journal phys.org has an earlier article on the original launch; this story is also covered at Space.com and The Telegraph
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01 2014, @04:33PM
Good job, China! Welcome to the 1960s!
(Score: 3, Informative) by isostatic on Saturday November 01 2014, @06:52PM
How many people can America put in space at the same time?
As far as manned exploration goes, it's Russia and China. Time will tell if Chiba meets it's deadlines, but this week hasn't been a good one for the west.
(Score: 3, Funny) by tibman on Saturday November 01 2014, @07:23PM
fttt, that's only because Russia and China haven't caught up with the US yet. In a decade or two they'll be outsourcing their lift platforms too. thatsthejoke.jpg
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Saturday November 01 2014, @07:31PM
once poverty-stricken nation
Say what? China may have had issues, and still does, but the last time that I heard it described as impoverished was fifty years ago when my parents tried to force me to eat lima beans because "there are starving children in China."
And even then I was sceptical.
(and for that matter there are one hell of lot of poor people in the US, who can't seem to manage a space program that doesn't blow up on lift-off.)
(Score: 5, Informative) by fnj on Saturday November 01 2014, @08:18PM
Hmmm. My own parents some 60 years ago were telling me children in Africa and South America were starving (which NO ONE would deny), but China was incredibly backward at that time as well.
Judicious questioning is good. Systematic skepticism (doubting accepted knowledge in general) gets counterproductive fast. Denying established facts is pathological. During the Great Chinese Famine [wikipedia.org] of 1959 to 1961 there were from 15 million (Chinese government's own statistics) to 45 million (upper limit of scholars' estimates) starved. Such was the harvest of the Great Leap Forward.
Chinese GDP per capita [chinaglobaltrade.com] grew from 2% of USA in 1980 through 7% in 1990 to 16% in 2010. So yes, they only came out of poverty as a whole within perhaps the last 30 years or so.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Saturday November 01 2014, @09:46PM
http://cdn.phys.org/newman/gfx/news/hires/2014/chinaslunart.jpg [phys.org]