China's space base prepares for launch

Deep in the vast and mostly unpopulated Gobi Desert, China's spacecraft launch base is quietly awaiting the country's first-ever manned space flight.

A "Long March" II F carrier rocket stands at the launch pad in the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu Province, northwest China.

China is counting down to its first manned space flight, scheduled for sometime between Oct. 15 and Oct. 17.

Since the spring of 1958, Jiuquan, a remote place near an ancient Great Wall ruin, has grown into China's largest satellite launch center.

China's first satellite blasted off here and so did the first four unmanned spacecraft.

A river named Ruoshui runs in front of the town, making it an oasis. Red willows and elms stand along both sides of the streets while multi-colored bushes are dotted here and there.

To store water, a man-made reservoir covering 10 square kilometers was built in the town.

Street lamps at the main avenue, Chang'an Street, each looking like a spaceship atop a rocket, are part of the space flight features that could be found in a great number of places in the town, which also include sculptures, hotels and other buildings.

In small restaurants in the town, young space technicians and scientists are often seen when there are projects underway in the launch base.

Northeast of the launch base lie the graves of more than 500 people who contributed to the country's space cause, including the late founder of China's space program, Marshal Nie Rongzhen.

China's satellite launch center brings green benefits

Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center

The Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center has turned the desert zone where it is built into an eco-friendly city where flowers, grass and other plants thrive in late autumn.

More than 60 oases have emerged in the Gobi desert since the center was founded in 1958, in Jiuquan, northwest China.

It is hard to imagine the scene of the riverside city with flourishing vegetation appearing in the extremely arid desert where the annual rainfall is 40 mm while annual evaporation is over 3,600 mm.

Zhang Yujiang, deputy director of the center, said the authorities of the center had made improvement and protection of the local ecological environment a priority.

The center launched the ecological improvement efforts on the chance that the State Council added the site to a state-level management project of the Heihe River that flows through the area. It took effective measures to preserve natural bush and wood plantations through irrigation, fenced cultivation, fire prevention and the treatment of diseases and insect pests harming forests of diversiform-leaved poplars.

The center invested heavily in building three separate zones --the launch technological zone, the red willow and poplar zone, and the urban zone -- to form a desert city with unique scenery and a pleasant environment.

After decades of environmental improvements, the center has created more than 60 oases, with an average 600 square meters of vegetation for each person working or living there. The center now has the Dongfeng Natural Park, the Railway Park, a sculpture park and a swimming pool, and is building a World Park.

Editor: Catherine