BEIJING, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) — China successfully completed Monday the country’s second space docking that linked the unmanned spacecraft Shenzhou-8 again with the space lab Tiangong-1, according to the mission’s control center.<\/p>\n
About half an hour before the re-docking, Shenzhou-8 had disengaged from Tiangong-1 after a 12-day flight together.<\/p>\n
Shenzhou-8, launched on Nov. 1, rendezvoused and docked with the target orbiter Tiangong-1 on Nov. 3 in an orbit 343 km above earth, marking China’s first space docking a success. Tiangong-1 has been in orbit since its launch on Sept. 29.<\/p>\n
The Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC), which commanded the Shenzhou-8 mission, called the re-docking a success, during which functions of the measuring equipment and docking mechanism were tested in solar light.<\/p>\n
Following the re-docking, the coupled spacecraft will fly together for two more days before the scheduled return of Shenzhou-8 to earth, Wu Ping, spokeswoman for the manned space program, said earlier.<\/p>\n
The BACC said Monday that after the successful docking tests, the center will further modify the parameters of the orbit for Shenzhou-8 to return based on data collected through close monitoring over the procedures.<\/p>\n
Prior to its return, Shenzhou-8 will re-disengage from Tiangong-1 and fly alone for a period of time, instead of immediately returning to earth, Li Jian, deputy chief engineer of BACC, said.<\/p>\n
“Acquisition of the space docking technology is vital to China for implementing the three-phase development strategy of its manned space program,” spokeswoman Wu said.<\/p>\n
Another two docking missions with Tiangong-1 have been planned next year, and at least one will be manned, Wu said.<\/p>\n
China plans to establish its own space lab around 2016 and a manned space station around 2020, she said.<\/p>\n
Source:Xinhua<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIJING, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) — China successfully completed Monday the country’s second space docking that linked the unmanned spacecraft Shenzhou-8 again with the space lab Tiangong-1, according to the mission’s control center. About half an hour before the re-docking, Shenzhou-8 had disengaged from Tiangong-1 after a 12-day flight together. Shenzhou-8, launched on Nov. 1, rendezvoused […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5362"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}