This week, in an isolated stretch of the Gobi Desert in northwestern China, a rocket waited to… This week, in an isolated stretch of the Gobi Desert in northwestern China, a rocket waited to carry the first “taikonaut” – the Chinese equivalent of an astronaut – into space. The successful launch made China the third country, after Russia and the United States, to accomplish such a feat.

The Chinese-made Long March 2F rocket, carrying the Shenzhou V spacecraft, took off at around 9 p.m. last night – about 9 a.m. on Oct. 15 at the site of the launch – from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, 1,000 miles west of Beijing. The craft carried one taikonaut, air force Lt. Col. Yang Liwei,38, who was picked from a core group of more than a dozen trained men whose identities have been kept secret.

Concrete information leading up to the flight has been scarce, because security has always been tight at the Chinese space program. What little information that comes out is usually filtered through government news agencies like Xinhua.

One of the biggest mysteries had been the exact date and time of takeoff. The government’s latest statements put the launch date between October 15 and 17, but it would not specify whether it would be during the day or at night, when the other four Shenzhou-class launches took place.

The identity of the first taikonaut was not expected to be revealed until the last minute, much like the situation surrounding 1962’s Mercury-Redstone 3 mission, when Alan Shepard became the first American in space. But one Hong Kong newspaper, Wen Wei Po, ran a cover story that named Yang as the most likely candidate. The paper also named two others, Zhai Zhigang and Nie Haisheng, as being in final consideration as well.

While technical data has been scarce, less scientific data has not. According to China.com, about 20 meals, including shredded pork, stir-fried chicken and vacuum-packed rice, have been developed for space dining. According to Xinhua, Shenzhou V is expected to make 14 orbits around the Earth, and then land within a large zone in Inner Mongolia, a sparsely populated region of northern China.

On the verge of China’s first manned space flight mission, NASA remains in the grips of an estimated 18-month shuttle mission delay, sparked by last February’s Columbia shuttle crash.

The current situation for the two countries is similar to one that existed in 1986. That year, following the Challenger explosion, the United States announced a suspension of shuttle flights while China announced it would begin sending up commercial satellites.

China launched its first satellite in 1970. Propelled into orbit by a refitted ballistic missile, the small satellite transmitted the song “The East is Red” for a little under a month.

After an ambitious period of growth in the 1980s, the initiative – dubbed Project 921 – to launch a manned Chinese space program was approved by Chinese government leadership in 1992.

On Nov. 20, 1999, China sent up the first of its Shenzhou missions, carrying plants and animals, but not humans, into space to test performance and life-support systems.

On Tuesday, October 14, China’s state-run CCTV service canceled planned live television coverage of the event. Some have speculated this is a precaution after a failed 1995 Long March-class rocket launch, which crashed soon after takeoff and killed six people on the ground. The crash was broadcast live to a television audience, and some suspect that it hurt perceptions of the program.

Many pundits see it as a self-conscious demonstration of China’s technological prestige, as well as a legitimizing factor for the incoming “fourth generation” administration led by new President Hu Jintao and new Premier Wen Jiabao.

The Chinese government heavily promoted the mission, with unprecedented state media coverage and a television documentary on the space program’s history that will, according to Xinhua, begin airing on state-run television next Monday. Officials have planned to launch more missions, including a possible space station and several unmanned probes to orbit the moon, within five years.

There has been speculation that China’s increased space efforts will have military implications, including increased spying and intelligence capabilities in efforts against Taiwan.

Chinese Foreign Minister Zhang Qiyue last week said that China would not engage in a space “arms race,” according to CNN.