At last the historical flight of the world's biggest jumbo jet landed safely in Sydney on Thursday, completing its long-delayed first commercial flight from Singapore.
The double-decker A380 emerged from low-lying cloud and flew across Sydney's famous harbor before touching down on time, a contrast to two years of delays which pushed its manufacturer Airbus into a loss.
Watched by hundreds of airport staff and aviation enthusiasts lining fences outside the airport, passengers on the inaugural Singapore Airlines (SIA) flight disembarked without a hitch.
The wet Sydney afternoon did nothing to dampen passengers' enthusiasm.
"It was just an incredible flight. The people onboard really turned it into a party," said passenger Ross Greenwood, a journalist for Australia's Channel Nine television network.
"The food was luxurious in first class, but even those people in economy were fed fillet of beef and it was beautiful," he said. "The aircraft is incredibly quiet and spacious."
Passengers paid between $560 and $100,380 for seats on the inaugural flight, after bidding for the tickets as part of a charity auction to drum up publicity.
During the flight, first-class passengers reclined in suites modeled on luxury yacht interiors and slumbered in proper beds which the airline said can be converted into doubles.
French design house Givenchy designed the bedding, while passengers ate off fine bone chinaware and drank from crystal glasses bought in by the same designer.
The A380 can seat more than 800 passengers although Singapore Airlines, the first airline to take delivery of the plane, has configured the aircraft to seat 470 over two decks, hoping to attract more top-paying passengers.
It replaces the Boeing 747 jumbo as the world's largest airliner in service.
Hundreds of airport staff and passengers armed with camera phones earlier watched the take-off from Singapore.
"I'm a big airplane freak and I love everything about planes," said Ernest Graaff, an A380 passenger as he waited to board the jet among beaming SIA flight attendants.
Graaff paid $40,000 for two business-class tickets on the jet. "I'm excited about being a part of history."
The aircraft will return to Singapore on Friday.
Airbus handed the superjumbo to SIA earlier this month after wiring glitches caused two years of delays, pushed the planemaker into a loss and leading to the loss of 10,000 jobs.
SIA is to take delivery of another five A380s in 2008. The airline plans to introduce the A380 on long-haul flights to London, Tokyo and San Francisco from early 2008
At the same week China launched its first lunar probe on Wednesday, the first step in an ambitious 10-year plan to send a rover to the moon and return it to earth.
State television showed pictures of the Chang'e 1 orbiter taking off with a trail of smoke from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province in southwestern China.
The launch comes just weeks after China's regional rival Japan put a probe into orbit around the moon in a big leap forward for Asia's undeclared space race. India is likely to join the regional rivalry soon, with plans to send its own lunar probe into space in April.
The Long March 3A rocket carrying the probe blasted off shortly after 6 p.m. (1000 GMT) after officials from the China National Space Administration said weather conditions were good for a lift off. Watch the rocket launch »
Several thousand people living within 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) of the launch center and under the rocket's trajectory were evacuated two hours before the launch, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
More than 2,000 tourists were also on hand to watch the rocket soar into space after paying 800 yuan ($106).
The Chang'e 1, named after a mythical Chinese goddess who flew to the moon, will orbit Earth while technical adjustments are made, and will enter the moon's orbit by Nov. 5, administration spokesman Li Guoping said when the launch plans were announced Monday.
The project's goal is to analyze the chemical and mineral composition of the lunar surface. The probe will use stereo cameras and X-ray spectrometers to map three-dimensional images of the surface, and to study the moon's dust.
The 2,300-kilogram (5,070-pound) Chang'e 1 is expected to transmit its first photo back to China in late November, and to conduct explorations of the moon for a year.
The launch marks the first step of a three-stage moon mission. In about 2012 there will be a moon landing with a moon rover. In the third phase about five years later, another rover will land on the moon and be returned to earth with lunar soil and stone samples, Xinhua said.
In 2003, China became only the third country in the world after the United States and Russia to put its own astronauts into space.
But China also alarmed the international community in January when it blasted an old satellite into oblivion with a land-based anti-satellite missile.
The Long March rocket had a drawing on it of a moon with an eclipse which was also designed to look like a dragon. "China Moon Probe" was written in Chinese on the rocket.
A government official said last week China hopes to join an international space station project that already counts leading space powers like the United States and Russia as its members.
China does not participate in the International Space Station, due in part to American unease about allowing a communist dictatorship a place aboard.
The space station's first section was launched in 1998 and it has been inhabited continuously since 2000 by Russian, U.S. and European crew mates.
Japan's space agency said nearly two weeks ago that its lunar probe was in high orbit over the moon and all was going well as it began a yearlong project to map and study the lunar surface.
So the space race is begining to step up.
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