Posted on behalf of David Cyranoski.
China today celebrated the launch of its unmanned Shenzhou-8 spacecraft from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Inner Mongolian desert. Within two days, the spacecraft is scheduled to dock with the unmanned space station module Tiangong-1, which has been orbiting Earth since its launch on 29 September this year.
The docking, if successful, will be China’s first and a large step towards the establishment of its own space station, which is scheduled to be completed by 2020. Preparation will include a series of launches, including two manned spacecraft scheduled to dock with Tiangong-1 next year (see China unveils its space station).
Shenzhou-8 carries the Science in Microgravity Box (SIMBOX) where 17 experiments are planned. Of those, German scientists, under the auspices of a 2008 agreement between the German Aerospace Centre and China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO), will be conducting 6 independent experiments and two collaborative experiments with Chinese scientists. This is the first time a Shenzhou craft includes experiments involving another country.
The German experiments include exposing plants, nematodes, bacteria and human cancer cells to zero gravity and space radiation for nearly three weeks and “investigating the crystallisation of medically relevant biomacromolecules”.
One collaboration will feature a miniature ecosystem with algae and fish to study “the material and energy flows in a closed system” with the aim of developing “a biological life-support system to produce oxygen and food as well as treat water in future long-duration space missions.” In the second, scientists will “investigate the crystallisation of medically relevant proteins in space”.
https://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10081/151_read-1791/
For China, the crucial thing is a successful docking. A failure to maneuver the swingbys needed to catch up with Tiangong-1, which is orbiting at 343 kilometres above the Earth, would be a major setback.
Image: A Shenzhou capsule. Courtesy of hibikiw via Flickr under Creative Commons.