With observers waiting in the mountains of Sichuan, four coal miners seated in a mess hall in Guizhou Province about 400 kilometers away watched a red-hot object crash into a nearby grove of trees around noon. Venturing out to see the crashed object, one reportedly threw a rock and was relieved to hear a metallic sound confirming the object was of terrestrial origin. The miners reported the object to local authorities and the recovery team eventually arrived to find the spacecraft intact and the imagery undamaged. The reentry vehicle was damaged by reentry and the parachute partially burned, however the film was declared undamaged and the mission was deemed as success making China the third nation to capture space-based imagery after the United States' CORONA satellite in 1960 and the Soviet Union's Zenit satellite in 1962.
