A Chinese unmanned spacecraft headed off to space today for the country’s first docking mission, paving the way for the establishment of China’s first space station by 2020 to rival Mir, the space lab being operated by Russian and US astronauts.
The successful launch of unmanned spacecraft Shenzhou-8 in the early hours today from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest Gobi desert was successful, Commander-in-chief of China’s manned space programme, Mr Chang Wanquan, announced.
The spacecraft was sent into the designated orbit by Long March-2F rocket.
It is heading for rendezvous with Tiangong-1, or “the Heavenly Palace” that was put into space on September 29 for the country’s first space docking, which was expected to take place in the next two days.
The move, if successful, will pave the way for China to operate a permanent space station around 2020 and make it the world’s third to do so after the US and Russia. This will be the second space station after the Mir space lab launched in 2001 by Russia.
Mir is currently managed by Russian and US space programmes.
The docking of the Shenzhou-8 will take place at a height of 343 km above the Earth’s surface.
It will return to the Earth after two docking tryouts.
Chinese and German scientists will conduct 17 life science space experiments on the Chinese spacecraft Shenzhou-8, Wu Ping, spokeswoman for China’s manned space programme, said.
To ensure the success of the mission, Chinese space engineers have made “considerable modifications” on Shenzhou-8 to previous versions of the spacecraft.
Shenzhou-8, with a length of nine metres and a maximum diameter of 2.8 metres, has a liftoff weight of 8.082 tonnes.
“More than half of the 600 or so sets of equipment have been modified, while newly designed devices account for about 15 per cent of the total,” Wu said.
The unmanned spacecraft is also equipped with devices for recording real images and mechanical parameters during its flight, to test the space docking before a manned attempt.