German experiment box back to lab after 17-day space voyage

The German-made experiment box aboard on China's unmanned spacecraft Shenzhou-8 returned to a Beijing lab early Friday, a few hours after the successful retrieval of the re-entry module. The SIMBOX, or Science in Microgravity Box which carried 17 experiments conducted by Chinese and German scientists and traveled in space for 17 days, was air transported to Beijing at midnight from a grassland 600 kilometers away from the Chinese capital. Scientists have taken the SIMBOX, harboring experiments on space biology, bio-engineering and life-supporting mechanism, to the Chinese Academy of Sciences lab.