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China piecing together space station

Chinese state media yesterday announced the official launch of the country’s manned space station programme. The media report quoted an anonymous spokesman for the program who said the space station, to be completed by 2020—two years earlier than previous plans—would be “relatively large”.

The announcement ties together piecemeal recent reports of progress since the plan was first floated well over a decade ago.

In August, the China National Space Administration announced the completion of first unmanned space module, the 8.5 tonne Tiangong-1, which is expected to be launched early next year. China will makes its first stab at space docking next year when Tiangong-1, which means “heavenly palace”, hooks up with the unmanned Shenzhou VIII space vehicle, which will be launched later next year. That will be followed by dockings with with Shenzhou IX and Shenzhou X, to be launched in 2012, which are expected to carry Taikonauts—including China’s first female astronauts.

The Tiangong-2 space laboratory, which will be used for scientific experiments and to test living conditions, will be launched by 2016. The Tiangong-3 core cabin unit, which will extend the experimental facilities, will complete the ensemble in 2020.

What this means for recent negotiations concerning China’s participation in the International Space Station were not clear. The state media article announcing the Chinese space station plan concludes:

Earlier this year, there were calls to include countries such as China, India and the Republic of Korea into the ISS program. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden led a delegation to China earlier this month at the invitation of the China Manned Space Engineering Office. While the visit did not result in any specific proposals for cooperation, Bolden said it led to increased understanding of manned spaceflight.

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    Houston said:

    Do not include totalitarian countries into the ISS program until all the human rights activists are released from prison.

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    Peter in Denmark said:

    @Houston — You’re not really getting the point of this bit of news. This isn’t about “tolerating” China’s entry into the ISS programme. It’s about China having declined to participate in that programme, in favour of going it alone. That China chose to take this approach says a lot about their plans for the future and their confidence in their capabilities. It also, incidentally, highlights the lack of serious commitment to the ISS programme that the participating nations have shown over the past decade. In particular, US cutbacks on the space programme have caused a severe lag.

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