China’s spacecraft dock successfully
With a “kiss” more than 200 miles above Earth, a pair of Chinese spacecraft successfully coupled early Thursday morning, bringing the country one step closer to its four-decade quest for manned space exploration.
The docking of the Shenzhou 8 capsule with the Tiangong 1 module was broadcast live on national television. Premier Wen Jiabao watched from the control center in Beijing, and thousands of citizens expressed their pride through Internet postings.
In the coming year, officials plan to repeat the exercise with astronauts as part of the mission to reach the moon and to launch China’s own space station by 2020. If all goes according to plan, China’s floating laboratory would become airborne around the same time the aging International Space Station goes into retirement.
Aerospace engineers from the United States and Russia perfected space docking in the 1960s, but Wu Ping, a spokeswoman for China’s manned space program, said Chinese scientists had come to this moment largely on their own, having domestically produced hundreds of components and instruments.
“This makes China one of the few countries in the world that can independently research and develop docking mechanisms,” Wu said Thursday, describing the achievement as “a historic breakthrough for our country and a huge technical leap forward.”