China to launch manned spacecraft
- by Minnie Bishop
- in Research
- — Oct 17, 2016
Chinese astronauts Jing Haipeng (L) and Chen Dong salute during the send-off ceremony of the Shenzhou-11 manned space mission at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, northwestern China's Gansu Province on October 17, 2016.
They will arrive at China's orbiting space lab Tiangong-2 within two days and stay for 30 more days before returning to earth, according to the report.
The Shenzhou-11 blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 7:30am local time on top of the Long March-2F carrier rocket. Since China initiated its manned space program, she said, it has signed a number of cooperation deals with space agencies of many countries and global organizations.
China has sent a two-man crew into orbit aboard Shenzhou-11, a "heavenly vessel", for the country's longest-ever crewed space mission so far.
As a part of its a broader plan to have a permanent manned space station in service by around 2022, China today launched a manned space mission into space. The experiments will cover cutting-edge technologies like space materials science and space life science.
China made a three-step strategy in 1992 for its manned space programme, the large-scale manned space station being the last step.
A small microsatellite named Banxing 2 stowed aboard Tiangong 2 will fly near the space lab in orbit and collect exterior imagery.
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Tiangong-2 will host astronauts "for up to 30 days whereas in the past it was short visits only", said Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor at the Naval War College and a noted expert on China's space program. One month after launch, the unmanned Shenzhou-8 spacecraft carried out an automated rendezvous and televised docking with the research module.
Jing, who has been to space twice before for Shenzhou-7 mission in 2008 and Shenzhou-9 mission in 2012, will command the mission to the space lab which was launched last month.
Tiangong (foreground) and Shenzhou meet in orbit.
The astronauts will also carry out a series of scientific experiments, including three coming from the winners of a space science contest for Hong Kong schools past year.
A spokesperson for the Chinese manned space program said Shenzhou-11 will be launched on Monday at 7:30 a.m. Beijing time. Another space station, the Mir, was in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, and was operated by the Soviet Union, later Russian Federation.
Tianhe-1, the core module of the planned space station, is scheduled for launch in 2018.
