There’s a new member of the exclusive space club. While China launched its first rocket into orbit in 2003, there’s one thing the country hasn’t been able to accomplish, and that’s actually docking a space ship with something in orbit. Well, China already has the Tiangong 1 space module in orbit around planet Earth, and now it’s time to see if they can’t actually put people on board that thing. An unmanned Chinese Long March rocket, dubbed Shenzhou-8, is expected to attempt to dock with Tiangong 1 sometime within the next few days.
“Mastering the technology of rendezvous and docking will lay a firm foundation for China to build a space station,” said Zhou Jianping, the chief designer of China’s manned space engineering project. “Once we have mastered this technology, we will possess the basic technology and capacity to build a space station, and this will open up possibilities for even larger activities in space. Since we have never conducted a similar test before and the system is so complicated, we have many unknowns.”
Here’s the thing. If this mission is successful, can you actually believe what China says? If it isn’t successful, will they confess to the world they couldn’t do it? I mean, the Chinese government is prone to making things up. How do we know they won’t steal some footage from Apollo 13 and try to pass it off as their new space station?
Tags: space, space exploration, space club, China sends a rocket into space, Chinese Long March rocket, Chinese Long March, Zhou Jianping, Tiangong 1, Shenzhou-8, Shenzhou-8 rocket, Tiangong 1 space module, Chinese space program, China to build space station, China to dock space shuttle with space station