Simon Denyer
October 17, 2016
China launches longest manned space mission, aims to explore ‘more deeply and more broadly’
BEIJING — China’s march into space took another step forward Monday, as two astronauts embarked on the nation’s longest manned mission.
The pair aim to dock with an orbiting space lab and remain aboard for 30 days, a crucial step in China’s plans to operate its own space station by 2022, and part of a much broader space program that has ambitions to put astronauts back on the moon and land an unmanned rover on Mars.
State-run China Central Television (CCTV) showed the Shenzou-II spacecrafttaking off from a launch center on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northern China at 7:30 a.m., carried by a Long March-2F rocket.
The pair were seen on board saluting seconds before takeoff. They will dock with the Tiangong-2 lab in two days, and conduct a series of scientific experiments, testing computers as well as propulsion and life-support systems, CCTV reported.
After the launch was declared a success, Defense Minister Fan Changlong read a congratulatory message from President Xi Jinping calling for China’s astronauts to explore space “more deeply and more broadly.”
China’s Shenzhou-11 spaceship on board a Long March-2F carrier rocket takes off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China’s Gansu province on Oct. 17. (Chinatopix via Associated Press)
The president also encouraged them to “constantly break new ground for the manned space program, so that Chinese people will take bigger steps and march further in [their] space probe, to make new contributions to the building of China into a space power.”
The astronauts were Jing Haipeng, who will turn 50 during the trip and is flying his third mission, and Chen Dong, 37.
“It is any astronaut’s dream and pursuit to be able to perform many space missions,” Jing said Sunday, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
China is spending heavily on a space program that aims to catch up with established space powers the United States and Russia, and outpace Asian rivals India and Japan. As in all those countries, the space program is a source of great national pride.
China was excluded from participation on the International Space Station, largely because of U.S. concerns that its space program had a strong military component.
Instead, it aims to build its own space station, and hopes that other countries will also launch missions there. It insists that its motives are peaceful.
“Shenzhou-11 is a new beginning. It marks the imminent end to the exploratory stage of China’s manned space program,” said Zhang Yulin, deputy commander in chief of China’s manned space program, who is also deputy chief of the armament development department of the Central Military Commission.
Zhang said China hopes to carry out regular space missions after 2020, sending astronauts, engineers and even tourists into space several times a year, Xinhua news agency reported. It will be the only country operating a space station after the International Space Station is retired in 2024.
China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003, and 10 years later landed the Jade Rabbit rover on the Moon — the first “soft landing” there in nearly four decades — although the rover later developed technical problems.
It aims to land a rover on the dark side of the moon by 2018, and then send an unmanned vehicle to Mars by 2020, emulating the U.S. Viking landers in 1976.
Ultimately it hopes to land an astronaut on the moon by about 2025, more than five decades after Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon.
The current mission, which will stretch for 33 days in all, is more than twice the length of China’s last 15-day manned mission, in 2013.
Shenzou means “divine vessel,” while Tiangong means “heavenly palace.”
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