China ready for next space leap

01 Oct BBC

China is due to launch its first space laboratory, Tiangong-1.

The 10.5m-long, cylindrical module will be unmanned for the time being, but the country’s astronauts, or yuhangyuans, are expected to visit it next year. Tiangong-1 will demonstrate the critical technologies needed by China to build a fully fledged space station - something it has promised to do at the end of the decade.

The space lab is set to ride to orbit atop a Long March 2F rocket. State media say the lift-off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in Gansu Province is likely to occur between 21:16 and 21:31 local time (13:16-13:31 GMT). The Long March will put Tiangong in a near-circular path around the Earth, just a few hundred km above the surface. It will operate in an autonomous mode, monitored from the ground. Then, in a few weeks’ time, China will launch another unmanned spacecraft, Shenzhou 8, and try to link the pair together.

This rendezvous and docking capability is a prerequisite if larger structures are ever to be assembled in orbit.

Commentators say Russian technology, or a close copy of it, will be used to bring the two craft into line. Assuming the venture goes well, two manned missions (Shenzhou 9 and 10) should follow in 2012. The yuhangyuans - two or three at a time - are expected to live aboard the conjoined vehicles for up to two weeks. Tiangong-1 will launch on the latest version of a Long March 2F rocket The lab will go into a 300-400km-high orbit and will be untended initially An unmanned Shenzhou vehicle will later try to dock with Tiangong The orbiting lab will test key technologies such as life-support systems China’s stated aim is to build a 60-tonne space station by about 2020

Tiangong means “heavenly palace” in Chinese. The programme is the second step in what Beijing authorities describe as a three-step strategy.

The first step was the development of the Shenzhou capsule system which has so far permitted six nationals to go into orbit since 2003; then the technologies needed for spacewalking and docking, now in progress; and finally construction of the space station.