Yuhangyuan 1

Personal: Male. Born in China.

Astronaut Career

Astronaut Group: China Group 1 - 1998. Active Entered space service: 19 November 1996.

Chinese astronaut photographed training at the time of the Shenzhou 4 launch in January 2003. The January 2 edition of the Hong Kong newspaper Sing Tao Daily identified him by name as 'Chen Long' and indicated he would be the only crew member aboard Shenzhou 5, the first Chinese manned spaceflight, planned for October 2003. It was indicated that he had the best overall performance of the 14 Chinese astronauts in training. Western observors considered 'Chen Long' to be a corruption of 'Li Qinglong', one of the astronauts in training in Baikonur in 1996. They also thought that the astronaut in this photograph was the same person as Wu Jie, one of the astronauts trained in Russian in 1996.

19 November 1998 - China Astronaut Training Group 1 selected.. Selection of astronauts to fly the Project 921 / Shenzhou manned spacecraft began at the end of 1995. Only PLAAF pilots were considered. Review of service records identified 1504 candidates, further reduced to 886 after stricter screening. In the summer of 1996, 60 candidates passed initial testing at their home bases and were sent to Beijing for final tests and interviews. By April 1997 the candidate list had been pared down to 20, and the final 12 were selected at the end of 1997. The group was officially established in January 1998. In March, 1998, the two Chinese astronauts trained in Russia in 1996, who were also the trainers of this first group of 12 cosmonauts, joined the group officially as candidates for future spaceflights, bringing the total to 14.