Shenzhou crew given a heroes' welcome

Astronauts Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng were given a hero's welcome yesterday after completing their historic five-day space mission.

'It was a perfect landing,' Colonel Fei said, smiling and appearing in good health in a state television interview last night. 'I give myself a high mark of 95,' he said of his own performance on the mission.

Hours after landing in Siziwang Banner, Inner Mongolia , the astronauts were flown to Beijing where they received a hero's welcome, riding in a parade past thousands of cheering soldiers at a military base.

Tang Xianming , director of China's Manned Space Engineering Office, said the mission, which cost around 900 million yuan, marked the completion of the first stage of China's manned space programme.

Jiang Jingshan , one of the designers of the programme, said he had been misquoted during a recent trip to Hong Kong by a local newspaper when he talked about the cost of the mission.

'I said China had so far spent an estimated 20 billion yuan on the manned space programme, which included the six Shenzhou spacecraft since 1999 and a lot of infrastructure in Beijing, Jiuquan and many other places,' he said yesterday.