China takes first step towards space station

China is about to take the first step towards building its own space station with the launch of Tiangong 1, or Heavenly Palace, in a further sign of its race to catch up with the US and Russia.

State media on Tuesday reported that China would next week launch an unmanned craft from the Chinese western Gobi desert that will be used for practising operations at a future space station. The launch comes as the US is cutting funding for its space programme, having retired its space shuttle fleet after a last flight of the Atlantis in July.
Although space experts warn of huge technological challenges ahead for the country’s space station plans, the programme would eventually make China the world’s only nation with a space station. The China Manned Space Engineering Office has said it plans to complete the space station in 2020, just as the International Space Station is scheduled to retire.
“Space flight is the concrete reflection of the overall strength of a great power,” said Jiao Weixin, a professor at the School of Earth and Space Sciences at Peking University.
While China’s foreign policy doctrine tries to avoid trumpeting the country’s “rise”, many citizens feel such technological prestige projects are part of a renaissance that will return the nation to its rightful place of a global power.
In July China joined a club of the select few nations’ deep-sea submersibles capable of diving deeper than 5,000 metres. Last October, it ousted the US as the maker of the world’s fastest supercomputer.
These achievements all contrast sharply with Beijing’s huge challenges in modernising a still poor and technologically weak country. The crash of two high-speed trains in July, which killed 40 people. triggered soul searching among many middle-class Chinese questioning their government’s relentless race for faster development.
The nine-metre long space capsule has become another symbol of how China, backed by the wealth accumulated in its three-decade economic boom, a state-led research push and a patriotic nation, is starting to close the gap on technologies once exclusive to the Cold War rivals.
According to the China Manned Space Engineering Office, the space station will focus on scientific purposes. However, it is part of a space programme largely controlled by the military which US experts say is helping China acquire advanced satellite, sensor and propulsion capabilities also useful for its missile programme.
If Tiangong 1 can successfully arrive and stay in space, China plans to practise docking at it. Later this year a first unmanned docking mission is scheduled, followed by two manned docking exercises next year. Later Tiangong versions will then go on longer missions to prepare the launch of the space station in parts.
Last month a Long March rocket similar to that earmarked to carry the Tiangong into space malfunctioned in a reminder of the huge challenges ahead. But a long delay was not an option; the launch had to happen ahead of October 1, China’s National Day.

By Kathrin Hille taken from http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c863c828-e37c-11e0-8f47-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1YatvuYtJ