China launched Shenzhou 5 with Yang Liwei on 15 October 2003, completing its first crewed spaceflight. The mission demonstrated a national system capable of launching a person to orbit and returning him. It belongs here because human spaceflight capability expanded beyond the Soviet/Russian and American programs that had previously launched crews. The significance is technological and institutional, not a claim that participation in another country’s spacecraft is less valuable.
Related reading: 1961: Yuri Gagarin’s orbital flight.
Source: 2003: Shenzhou 5 carries Yang Liwei.
Image credit: Shujianyang · CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized and JPEG compressed.
