Among the top 10 stories from around the world in 2013, U.S. space agency NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft took top place. In September, it became the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space.
The number-two story was judged to be the Russian Soyuz spaceship. Carrying three crew members, it docked with the International Space Station at express speed. The whole journey took only six hours from blastoff. It was the second manned Russian spaceship to reach the space station at express speed instead of a journey of two days.
Third place was taken by China's Chang'e-3 lunar probe, which, with the country's first moon rover onboard, landed on the moon in December, marking the first time that China has sent a spacecraft to soft-land on the surface of an extraterrestrial body.
The fourth-placed story is about India's maiden Mars orbiter mission, called Mangalyaan. The orbiter left Earth in December for a 300-day journey to the Red Planet.
Chang'e-3 took top spot in the experts' list of the top 10 stories of 2013 from China.
It was followed by the story of the Shenzhou-10 mission. During its 15-day space journey in June, Shenzhou-10 docked with orbiting space lab Tiangong-1 twice. Tiangong-1 has been in orbit for more than 600 days. It is designed to function for two years. The module is considered the first step in building a permanent space station in the future.
The two lists were released after a gathering of the space experts organized by China Space News, a newspaper under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
Source : XNews China
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