China on Saturday launched its most ambitious space mission to date, sending its first female astronaut into orbit and bidding to achieve the country’s first manual space docking.
Shenzhou-9 — China’s fourth manned space mission — blasted off on schedule at 6:37 pm (1037 GMT) from the remote Gobi desert in the nation’s northwest, state television pictures showed. Chang Wanquan, commander-in-chief of China’s manned space programme, said the craft had entered orbit, and declared the launch a “complete success”. The crew was headed by Jing Haipeng, a veteran astronaut who had gone to space twice already. Liu Yang, 33, who has created a stir in the media and online for becoming China’s first woman to travel to space, will conduct aerospace medical experiments and other space tests.
The mission will last 13 days, during which the crew will perform experiments and the manual space docking — a highly technical procedure that brings two vessels together in high speed orbit.
Successful completion of the rendezvous between the Shenzhou-9 (“Divine Vessel”) and the Tiangong-1 (“Heavenly Palace”) module already in orbit will take China a step closer to setting up its own space station in 2020.
