Just as USA decided to end their Space shuttle programs due to
fundings, China decided to reach into Space and play catchup.
By Kathrin Hille in Beijing
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.