Yang Liwei, China's 38-year-old first man in space, is scheduled to touch down somewhere in Inner Mongolia after covering half a million kilometers (310,000 miles), the Xinhua news agency said.

He can add his more than 21 hours spent in space to the 1,350 hours of flight experience he has clocked up as a fighter pilot, according to the agency.

The Shenzhou V lifted off from its Inner Mongolian launch pad at 9 amWednesday, making China the third country in the world to send a man into orbit.

SPACE.WIRE