Beijing ? A Chinese space capsule touched down on an isolated patch of the Gobi Desert early today, successfully completing China’s first manned space mission and bringing back to Earth a new hero, Lt. Col. Yang Liwei.

Shenzhou 5, or Divine Vessel 5, landed at 6:23 a.m. after orbiting the globe 14 times in a 21-hour mission, making China the third country after Russia and the United States to send a man into space.

“Astronaut Yang Liwei’s health and spirit seem excellent,” a state-run television journalist reported from the barren landing zone reached by a rescue team at 6:36 a.m. Yang emerged from the capsule eight minutes later and waved to the joyous crowd of soldiers.

Shenzhou 5 re-entered Earth’s atmosphere at 6:04 a.m. (5:04 p.m. CDT Wednesday) and opened its parachute about 20 miles above the ground. It was guided by four tracking ships in the Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean and southern Atlantic Ocean.

When it re-entered the atmosphere, a Chinese tracking, telemetry and command station in Namibia transmitted the order for the spacecraft to fire its retrorockets. The Shenzhou capsule then flew over Africa and Pakistan before beginning its descent over Tibet. The heat shield was jettisoned and rockets to soften the landing fired about 5 feet off the ground as the capsule touched down on the desert of Inner Mongolia.

Yang took off on a Long March 2F rocket Wednesday morning, 11 years after China resumed its program to launch a man into space and 42 years after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and American astronaut Alan Shepard traveled in space. .

“You carry the dreams of our nation into space with you,” President Hu Jintao told Yang as he sat behind a glass wall minutes before takeoff.

“Thanks to you, and thanks to the people, for putting confidence in me,” Yang replied.