When in China it was dawn, the spacecraft Shenzhou 8 took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center using a modified Long March 2F rocket, the most powerful made by the Chinese. This is an unmanned spacecraft that after two days should make the first docking of an unmanned spacecraft attempted by the Chinese. The docking will occur with the module Tiangong 1, which was put in orbit last September.
This is nothing new: China is now doing what the U.S.A. and USSR have done 40 years ago but the Chinese space program began in the ’90s and it’s developing step by step. A spacecraft that docks with a space module is one of the key developments in China’s space technology because it requires many different technical capabilities.
China’s long-term plan is to put into orbit a space station with a semi-permanent crew by 2020. The module Tiangong 1 is just the first experiment put into orbit to test the docking of Chinese spacecrafts but in the coming years it should be replaced by new larger modules and then they should be assembling the real space station.
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China will keep on cooperating with other nations in various space missions. Even this mission includes an experiment in collaboration with ESA (European Space Agency): in fact the spacecraft Shenzhou 8 has on board various kinds of biological samples to test the effects of microgravity and space radiation on different types of cells.
Despite this kind of cooperation, one of the reasons that led China to develop an independent space program was the fact that it felt excluded from the project of the International Space Station, especially by the U.S.A..
Today China is the country that has by far the most ambitious space program. Having started much later it’s far behind the achievements reached in the past by the U.S.A. and USSR / Russia but these nations no longer seem to want to invest lots of money on space programs. Consequently, within a decade, China could have its own space station and thanks to the technological advancements it could make with its space program it could go a long way on Earth and in space.
In the past the USA / USSR rivalry led to landings on the Moon, now it seems that India is the only nation actually committed to developing its own alternative space program because of its rivalry with China. Once we wondered whether people on Mars would speak English or Russian, perhaps today we must wonder whether in twenty years people on Mars will speak Chinese or Hindi.
