Happy birthday, dear dad in space!
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-10-13 15:10

Chinese mission control sent an urgent message to its space cowboy on the orbiting Shenzhou VI capsule -- happy birthday.

Astronaut Nie Haisheng turned 41 on Thursday and his wife and daughter were brought into Beijing's Aerospace Command and Control Centre the night before to sing to him, state media said.

"Happy birthday, fulfil your mission and triumphantly return home," Nie's daughter, Tianxiang, told her father before breaking into song.

Xinhua has described Nie, a colonel in the People's Liberation Army, as a "cowboy" and a man of few words.

People watch a giant TV screen, showing astronauts Fei Junlong (L) and Nie Haisheng walking to the launch tower of the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China's Gansu Province, at Beijing's railway station October 12, 2005. Nie Haisheng turned 41 on Thursday. [Reuters]

Twenty-four hours after blasting off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert, the Shenzhou VI had completed 16 orbits of the Earth and was hurtling through space at nearly eight km (five miles) per second, Xinhua news agency said.

Nie and his partner, Fei Junlong, will spend five days in orbit. On Thursday, they moved from the launch and re-entry capsule into the more spacious orbital module, where they will conduct experiments and eat and sleep in greater comfort.

China's first man in space, Colonel Yang Liwei, orbited Earth 14 times aboard the Shenzhou V craft in October 2003.

Fei also got on the phone on Wednesday night to speak with his wife and son.

"Dad, I'm waiting for you to come back so we can go fishing," his son, Fei Di, said.

China, the third country to put men into space twice after the former Soviet Union and the United States, has lofty space ambitions.

In further missions that will come as soon as 2007, the country plans to conduct spacewalks, dock a capsule with a space module, put a permanent space laboratory into orbit and even land a man on the moon.