China Succeeds in Orbital Docking

Chalk up another high profile success for the Chinese Space Program.  Earlier today, the unmanned Shenzhou-8 spacecraft successfully docked with China's first orbiting space lab, Tiangong-1.  This docking was performed automatically, which means there was no human control over either spacecraft during the last 50 kilometers of approach.  An impressive feat, by any standards.

Chinese television documented the automated link-up (CNTV/CCTV).

Shenzhou-8 will spend the next 12 days docked to Tiangong-1.  The spacecraft will then undock, and then re-dock to prove all systems are functioning properly.  After spending two more days attached, the two craft will separate for the last time, and Shenzhou-8 will head back to Earth.  China plans on sending two more Shenzhou spacecraft to dock with the orbiting lab, one of which will carry a crew of three taikonauts (Chinese astronauts) for a short stay aboard Tiangong-1.

Artist's conception of the Shenzhou-8/Tiangong-1 docking.

With this automated docking, China takes another step on its ambitious path of space exploration.  What makes this even more impressive is that only a handful of nations have accomplished this task.  The US, Russia, Japan, and the European Space Agency have all developed this technology on their own, and each has successfully sent craft to the International Space Station.  Now that China has demonstrated its ability to dock spacecraft automatically in orbit, it will be possible for the construction of a full-fledged Chinese space station to begin.  China plans to begin construction on a manned station, comparable to the Soviet space station Mir, by the beginning of the next decade.

I, as always, applaud China's progress in space exploration.  However, China's success in space flight always stirs up worries here at home about America's perceived decline as the preeminent space power.  Just last month, private space entrepreneur and founder of Bigelow Aerospace, Robert Bigelow, claimed that China has the ambition and ability to lay ownership to large swaths of the Moon.  Ambition, perhaps, but the ability to land people on the surface of the Moon is in China's distant future, if at all.  As it is, China simply doesn't give their various space agencies the funding they need to develop a truly heavy lift rocket capable of putting large payloads into Lunar orbit.  Add that to the fact that whatever China does in manned spaceflight, they'll being doing it alone.  Their manned program remains shrouded in military secrecy, sequestered from the openness of the international scientific community.  It is, ultimately, an unsustainable path that is doomed to fail.  Tourists will be spotting craters from lunar orbit in spacecraft built by Boeing and SpaceX long before China lands people on the Moon - so don't lose any sleep.