Posted: Tue, Aug 14, 2007, 8:19 AM ET (1219 GMT)
China's first manned space mission, Shenzhou 5, nearly had a fatal ending when spacecraft controllers could not communicate or locate the spacecraft during reentry, Chinese officials said Monday. Engineers had anticipated that there would be a communications blackout during the reentry of Shenzhou 5 in October 2003, carrying Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei, but were unable to locate the capsule on radar during that time, and "the echo signals from the spaceship were still volatile" after the capsule emerged from the blackout area, according to a report by the Xinhua official news agency. Without tracking information, controllers risked not deploying parachutes at the proper time and thus risked a crash. Controllers were able to eventually used ground-based cameras to locate the spacecraft and have it come down safely, although the capsule did land nine kilometers from its planned site.

Related Links:

•  Xinhua article
•  AFP article
•  Reuters article