China to Join Space Club

The People’s Republic of China is set to become the third country, after Russia and the USA, to send a man into space and the second to put a man on the moon. The project was announced by the director of the Chinese Space Agency, Luan Enjie, quoted by the newspaper “Peking Youth Daily”.

The plan to send a man into space this autumn will be followed by a manned flight to the moon by 2006, according to Luan Enjie, who added that satellites will be sent to the moon first to photograph its surface and to prepare for the cosmonauts’ journey.

This will be followed by a satellite bearing a vehicle to perform tests on the lunar soil, “which will be a further step towards the sending of our cosmonauts to the Moon”, according to scientists from the agency, quoted by the same newspaper.

Timofei BYELO PRAVDA.Ru