SHANGHAI: China completed its first-ever manual docking between a manned spacecraft and an orbiting lab module on Sunday, putting it a step closer in an ambitious campaign to build a space station.
The Shenzhou 9 and its three-person crew, including the country’s first woman in space, separated about 400 meters from the Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) 1 module for about two minutes before re-connecting under the manual control of the astronauts, with state television covering the event live.
The astronauts completed the maneuver shortly before 1 p.m. (0500 GMT). It follows a docking last week that was carried out by remote control from a ground base in China.
The Chinese astronauts have been living and working in the module for the past week as part of preparations for manning a permanent space station. They returned to the Shenzhou 9 capsule early Sunday and disconnected in preparation for the manual re-connection.
The crew includes 33-year-old Liu Yang, an air force pilot and China’s first female space traveler.
Liu is joined by mission commander and veteran astronaut Jing Haipeng, 45, and crew mate Liu Wang, 43.
Their mission, which is expected to last at least 10 days, is China’s fourth manned mission. Shenzhou 9 launched June 16 from the Jiuquan center on the edge of the Gobi desert in northern China.
China is hoping to join the United States and Russia as the only countries to send independently maintained space stations into orbit. It is already one of just three nations to have launched manned spacecraft on their own.
Another manned mission to the module is planned later this year. Possible future missions could include sending a man to the moon.
The Tiangong 1, which was launched last year, is due to be replaced by a permanent space station around 2020. That station is to weigh about 60 tons, slightly smaller than NASA’s Skylab of the 1970s and about one-sixth the size of the 16-nation International Space Station.
Rendezvous and docking exercises between the two vessels are an important hurdle in China’s efforts to acquire the technological and logistical skills to run a full space lab that can house astronauts for long periods.
The Shenzhou 9 had already conducted an automated docking with Tiangong 1, on June 18, a day after it blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Compared with an automated docking, manual docking is more challenging in terms of orbit control, said Xie Jianfeng, a space scientist with the Beijing Aerospace Control Center, told China’s official Xinhua news agency on Saturday.
