China inches closer to building its own space station

[ChinaToday]

China will launch the Shenzhou-10 spacecraft on 11 June, lofting three astronauts on a 15-day mission to learn how to rendezvous and dock with an orbiting module. The mission is the last of three scheduled experiments designed to help astronauts master the skills for building and operating a space station.

If all goes to plan, the mission will mark the end of the beginning of China's slow but steady approach to human space flight. Right now, the country is not doing anything revolutionary. But progress so far suggests that more advanced plans, such as a moon base or a crewed Martian trek, may not be beyond China's reach.

In a press conference Monday, a spokeswoman for the Chinese human space programme, Wu Ping, announced that Shenzhou-10 will lift off at 0938 UTC from the Jinquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi desert, according to the Chinese news service Xinhua. The capsule will carry two men, Nie Haisheng and Zhang Xiaoguang, and one woman, Wang Yaping.

The astronauts will rendezvous with the Tiangong 1 (Heavenly Palace 1) space module, which has been orbiting Earth since September 2011. The crew will do one automatic and one manual docking test. They will also run medical and technical tests and broadcast a science lesson to Chinese students from orbit.

Very ambitious

The launch continues the execution of an orderly programme laid out in the 1990s, says Joan Johnson-Freese of the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

"It's a slow, incremental programme, but it's also very ambitious," she says. China started with the uncrewed launch of the Shenzhou 1 spacecraft in 1999 and continued with its first crewed launch in 2003. This week's lift-off will mark their fifth human mission in 10 years.

The ultimate goal is to build a space station by 2020. What China plans to do with the space station is still unclear, and they may need a new heavy launch vehicle called the Long March 5 in order to build it.

There is a good chance they can make it happen, in part because China's approach has been markedly different from the frenetic space race between the US and the USSR in the 1960s and '70s, says Johnson-Freese.

"There was a space race between the US and Russia because we each started at the same place. But for China there's no race [with the US], because we're at very different starting positions," she says.

Persistent effort

The two countries also have different political attitudes towards space exploration. "What we have seen more than anything else is a truly long-term commitment to space that dates back at least 25 years, and a sustained interest during those 25 years," says Dean Cheng of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy research group in Washington DC.

By contrast, NASA's human spaceflight programme has struggled under changing budgets and political whims. Plans to return to the moon under George W. Bush's administration, for instance, morphed into crewed missions to an asteroid under Barack Obama's presidency.

When it comes to sending humans beyond Earth orbit, China's unwavering goals may see it beat other space powers like the US to the punch, says Cheng. "So as long as the money holds out and political stability reigns, they might well get to some place like Mars or establish a lunar presence, precisely because they are persistent and willing to spend the money and make the effort."

China inches closer to building its own space station - space - 10 June 2013 - New Scientist

 

[Cyberian]

What's New for Shenzhou 10
Sunday Jun 09, 2013

The imminent launch of Shenzhou 10 has caught the attention of spacewatchers. As its number indicates, this is hardly the first launch of the Shenzhou spacecraft, which has now chalked up well over a decade of flights. Now that China has so much experience in spaceflight, it's worth asking what's new about this upcoming mission.

This tenth launch of Shenzhou is China's fifth crewed space mission. Shenzhous 5, 6, 7 and 9 all carried astronauts into space. Shenzhou's other missions (1,2,3,4 and 8) were flown without anyone on board, and were largely aimed at testing the vehicle. Shenzhou has undergone revisions to its design throughout its lifetime, as different features have been interchanged for different missions.

Since Shenzhou 8, China has settled on a "standard" design for the spacecraft that features a docking system at its front, and a single set of solar panels on the instrument module at the spacecraft's rear. The third launch of a "standard" Shenzhou is noteworthy, as it suggests that this configuration of the spacecraft is performing well.

China has not delayed the launch to fix any major technical problems and has not spoken of any issues with the design and construction of the spacecraft. In fact, the Chinese media have repeatedly suggested that they are happy with its performance.

Thus, it seems unlikely that China will perform any more uncrewed test flights of this vehicle in the foreseeable future, and we have reached another milestone in the program. The number of crewed missions will now match the number of tests flights.

The mission of Shenzhou 10 will repeat most of the basic operations carried out by the Shenzhou 9 mission, and will carry out a docking with the Tiangong 1 space laboratory. In this regard, Shenzhou 10 will become the first mission to essentially mimic its predecessor.

Previous crewed Shenzhou missions have differed wildly in terms of crew size, mission length and mission objectives. The consistency of these two missions is another sign that the program is maturing and becoming more routine.

This will be China's longest space mission to date, and Shenzhou 10 is expected to stay in orbit for around 15 days, with roughly 12 days spent docked at Tiangong 1. The availability of extra cabin space, gear and logistics on board the Tiangong 1 laboratory helps to make this extended mission possible.

Additional supplies carried on board Shenzhou 10 itself will allow its crew to live in space for even longer than the astronauts on Shenzhou 9, who carried out the first crew expedition to Tiangong 1 in 2012.

We also expect Shenzhou 10 to carry out the most tricky on-orbit operations ever performed by a Shenzhou spacecraft. The spacecraft is expected to test different angles of approach to its docking with Tiangong, and will also fly in close formation to allow a photographic survey of the module. This will require careful control and navigation.

One additional factor on Earth is also worth noting. Shenzhou 10 is the first high-profile space launch to fly since Xi Jinping assumed the Presidency of China. Sinologists will be watching his activities during the mission to possibly glean clues about his leadership, although any such evidence will probably be speculative.

Mr Xi kept his cards fairly close to his chest before assuming the Presidency. Months after his ascendancy, Sinologists are still trying to work him out. Even the recent "summit" with US President Obama has been cryptic to decode for external observers.

More participation in the Shenzhou 10 mission by Mr Xi could lead to some interesting theories. It could suggest that China's new leadership intends to promote the space program more heavily to boost faith in the Chinese Communist Party, or shine some glory on Mr Xi himself. Exactly how Shenzhou 10 is promoted by officialdom and China's state-run media will test this suggestion.

There was relatively little reportage on the mission in the weeks leading up to the launch of Shenzhou 10, causing this analyst to suspect that some sort of policy change had been enacted. Will the code of silence change as the mission progresses?

This leads to another issue. Will China promote the mission more heavily to the international media in China itself? Gaining access to China's space program has always been notoriously difficult for foreign journalists. At one stage, China seemed to be opening up a bit more when the Shenzhou 7 spacewalk mission was launched, and a special media centre for foreign journalists was established.

There seemed to be a slight retreat from such openness for the missions that followed, and this Sydney-based analyst found himself answering questions from foreign correspondents in China who were stonewalled by local officials! So far, China has proven to be no more open to the international media for Shenzhou 10 than in the past, and once again, journalists in Bejing are contacting this writer.

There's another reason to savour the flight of Shenzhou 10. This will be the last Chinese human space mission for quite some time. We have been spoiled recently with the flight of Shenzhou 9 in 2012, followed by another human space mission this year. This is a very brisk rate of launches for China, where gaps of at least two years, and more commonly around three years, have appeared between astronaut missions.

China will not launch any more crews to the Tiangong 1 space laboratory, and will go quiet on human spaceflight for a while. The next sequence of Shenzhou missions is expected to fly to the Tiangong 2 laboratory, which itself will probably not be launched until around 2015 or possibly later. The gap between the flight of Shenzhou 10 and Shenzhou 11 could ultimately prove to be the longest hiatus in Chinese human spaceflight to date! So enjoy the fun while it lasts.

Dr Morris Jones is an Australian space analyst who has covered the Shenzhou program for spacedaily.com since 1999. Email morrisjonesNOSPAMhotmail.com. Replace NOSPAM with @ to send email. Dr Jones will answer media inquiries.

www.spacedaily.com/m/reports/Whats_New_for_Shenzhou_10_999.html