Telegraph.co.uk :China has taken one more step in its ambitious plans to become a global space power by completing the successful re-entry and landing of an unmanned space probe.The “Xiaofei” or “Little Flyer” lunar orbiter began re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere at 6.13am on Saturday and subsequently landed in Inner Mongolia, state media reported. The probe was launched eight days ago and travelled more than 520,000 miles during its mission around the Moon.The mission to the Moon was “another step forward for China’s ambition that could eventually land a Chinese citizen there,” Xinhua, China’s official news agency, said. It was “the world’s first mission to the Moon and back for some 40 years”.Saturday’s landing is the latest advance for a space program that China’s leaders see as an important way of commanding international respect. Some Chinese scientists have said they hope space exploration might help them discover precious natural resources that could help satisfy the country’s ravenous hunger for raw materials.Beijing has repeatedly insisted that it is not trying to compete with other nations. “Few countries can rival China’s space program although China never intended to participate in any ‘space race,'” Xinhua claimed.However, few doubt that a highly charged Asian space race is now underway, with Chinese and Indian scientists battling it out for supremacy.China was leapfrogged by its regional rival India in September when that country successfully sent a spacecraft into orbit around Mars, something China had previous tried but failed to achieve.”The success of our space program is a shining symbol of what we are capable of as a nation,” Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister, boasted at the time.China become first country to “soft-land” on the Moon in nearly four decades last December, deploying a six-wheeled buggy called the “Yutu” or “Jade Rabbit” to take photographs and soil samples.However, the “Jade Rabbit” ran into trouble shortly after touchdown. Its functions had now “degraded considerably,” Xinhua admitted on Saturday.Beijing’s latest space mission was intended to “test technologies” that the country hopes to use in a 2017 mission to the Moon during which an unmanned spacecraft will land, collect soil samples and return to earth, Xinhua said.The space probe had “gathered a lot of experimental data and laid a solid foundation for future missions” Wu Yanhua, deputy head of China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense was quoted as saying.
