* Astronomy

"One of our major tasks is to find the rocket's magnetic recorder" - Zhu Yabin, head of a land emergency rescue team.

The "black box”, which was jettisoned from the Long March II F rocket has been found by Lian Hua, an herdswoman in Otog Qi in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, 45 minutes after the lift-off.
The recorder fell onto pasture land just 1.5 kilometres away from her home. The magnetic recorder was designed to fall onto Otog Qi in Inner Mongolia with other booster parts of the rocket when the rocket performed stage one and stage two separation.

The boosters and fairing attached to the rocket at lift-off also were jettisoned onto four sites in a strip ranging about 800 km that covers Badain Jaran Desert of Inner Mongolia in north China and Yulin of the Shaanxi Province in northwest China.
The distinctive red coloured "black box' carried instructions to "Hand over to the Government," and "Monetary Reward Guaranteed."

The magnetic recorder, housed in the first stage of the launcher, was a contingency measure that records data should the telemetry not broadcast.
The recorder will be sent to Beijing for data analysis.
The other parts of the rocket will be destroyed on site or be sent back to Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre to be broken up.
All, apart from one, of the four roll boosters have been found.
The remaining one is still being searched for.

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Chinese taikonauts Fei Julong and Nie Haisheng today conducted observation and science experiments in their orbital module orbiting 343-kilometer high.
The science tests were to evaluate the effects of weightlessness.

The Shenzhou-6 spacecraft entered into orbit at 1:21 GMT.
During the 5 day mission the astronauts will leave the re-entry capsule and enter into the larger (9 cubic metre) orbital module at the front of the spacecraft.

It is not clear as to what the astronauts will do for those 5 days.


The re-entry module.
Credit: maxppp, imagechina