Career
In January 1998, Yang was selected as a member of the group of Chinese astronauts set to train to fly the Project 921 spacecraft. He was one of 14 chosen from among 1,500 pilot candidates. On September 20, 2003 the 14 astronauts started exercising in the real Shenzhou-5 spacecraft at the Jiuquan Launch Centre. In October Yang was finally selected as one of three finalists to be the country's first astronaut. In the Astronaut Training Base in Beijing, the team undertook the theoretical studies necessary to prepare them for space flight; Yang logged 1350 hours of flight time as a fighter pilot before he went to space training. At 9.00 on the morning of October 15, 2003, his training was put to the test as Shenzhou 5 lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi desert in northwest China's Gansu Province. He landed safely on the central grasslands of China's Inner Mongolia at about 7.00 on the following morning of October 16. He had orbited the Earth 14 times and traveled 500,000 kilometers, the flight took 21 hours and 23 minutes. Now Yang is Deputy Director of the China Astronaut Research and Training Center and also Deputy Director General of China's manned space program.