Sources at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre (JSLC) in the northwestern Gansu Province told Wen Wei Po that Shenzhou-3 (SZ-3), would land on Monday (Apr. 1) at a designated location in the Steppes in Inner Mongolia.

The newspaper reported on Wednesday (Mar. 27) that SZ-3 would land on Saturday.

The two-day "delay" in the landing is now in agreement with the date provided by the scientists whose experiments are aboard the spacecraft. These scientists told China Space News, a Chinese-language weekly aerospace publication, also on Wednesday that the mission would last 7 days.

The recovery team is busy preparing for the return of SZ-3 at the landing site.

The official Chinese news agency Xinhua also reported that mission controllers had successfully executed the first SZ-3 orbit maintenance yesterday (Mar. 29).

New Details Of Shenzhou And Its Launcher Revealed Beijing - Apr 01, 2002 - Perhaps as a sign of further maturity of the Chinese manned space program, new details of the Shenzhou manned spacecraft and its Changzheng-2F (Long March-2F) launcher appears in the March 27 issue of the Chinese-language weekly aerospace publication China Space News.

The primary mission control, the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center (BACCC), initiated the orbital maneuvering procedure at 3:30 p.m. Beijing Time (0730 UTC). Controllers sent a set of commands "through the appropriate ground tracking stations" to SZ-3.

At 6:15 p.m. Beijing Time (1015 UTC) when SZ-3 began its 61st orbit, the aft maneuvering thrusters fired for about 8 seconds to perform the first orbital adjustment of the mission.

The event was displayed in realtime as a 3-D animation on the large screen at the front of BACCC.

Shortly thereafter the Yuanwang-3 tracking vessel (YW-3, Yuanwang means "Long View"), which stationed in the Atlantic Ocean, sent the confirmation telemetry to BACCC.

BACCC reported that the mission was proceeding well with all equipment and science experiments performing nominally.

After four days and 22 hours in space, SZ-3 is in an orbit 330.2 km x 337.2 km with an inclination of 42.4 deg and a period of 91.2 minutes.

SZ-3 carries a total of 44 science and utility payloads on board, which cover scientific disciplines on material science, life science, Earth observations, and optical remote sensing of the terrestrial environment and space environment at the Earth's upper atmosphere.

After the Descent Module returns to Earth, the Orbital Module will remain in space to conduct experiments for about six months. The main task will be studying the space environment, atmospheric composition and density, and make Earth observations.

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