After a successful, by-the-book launch and a thriving mission, the Chinese Taikonauts have returned from their space program. The three men returned on Sunday, September 28th, at 5:40 p.m., in a remote location in Inner Mongolia. The Shenzhou VII Taikonauts and the flawless completion of the mission prove, once again, that the Chinese have unprecedented and unmatched technology, savvy and logistics. For instance, Zhai Zhigang performed the mission’s spacewalk. He was locked outside of the ship for about twenty minutes, and in-between collecting space matter samples, he took the time to wave a little Chinese flag, as a sign of gratitude towards his motherland. Upon returning, he had nothing but words of praise for the ingeniously engineered $4.4 million space outfit.

The spacewalk performed by Zhai has the world anticipating a very likely moon landing in the near future. These expectations aren’t high if we consider the fantastic progress the Chinese have made regarding space exploration, especially if we consider that they started space programs in 1992. A moon landing seems just as possible to the Chinese as eating rice for lunch.

As anticipated, the Taikonauts were greeted with a parade if epic proportions. The standards were set by previous Chinese astronauts, who received from housing to operas in their honor, besides their rightful place in history books and scientific studies.

Thousands of people roamed through Beijing, sporting balloons, banners and flags. Some of the spectators and participants to the parade were soldiers in uniform, undoubtedly proud of their fellow countrymen’s achievements.

The aftermath of the successful mission includes launching a new orbiting satellite, sending target vehicles into space and on planets, developing better care technologies for spacecrafts. Also, landing a man on the moon is a key target for the Chinese. The first moon landing was achieved by the U.S., in 1969, and the last was in 1972, as the U.S. was the only nation to achieve such a goal. Since then, space exploration has focused on unmanned missions. We can’t be sure as to when the next moon landing will take place, but we can rest assured that it will be a Taikonaut on the moon next.