Paris - Western experts are unimpressed by China's claims to have developed by itself the unmanned spaceship that took its maiden flight last weekend, saying the craft was born from a three-decade-old design bought from Russia. Beijing hailed the 21-hour unmanned flight made by the Shenzhou ("Divine Vessel") spacecraft, aimed at making China the third country after the former Soviet Union and the US to put a man in orbit.
The vehicle was "completely indigenous" and the mission "another milestone in China's astronautical history", the state-controlled media declared.
But analysts appraising official pictures of the mission say the vehicle seemed little more than a slightly modified version of the old Soviet workhorse of space, the Soyuz.