Three Chinese astronauts have manually docked their spacecraft with an orbiting module, a first for the country as it strives to match US and Russian space exploits. The Shenzhou 9 capsule completed the manoeuvre with the Tiangong 1 module shortly before 1pm (5am GMT) on Sunday 24 June. The docking – shown live on Chinese TV – follows a docking last week that was controlled remotely from a ground base in
China.Image above: The Tiangong 1 module seen via a camera in the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft before the automatic docking. 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 on 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 traveller. Liu is joined by mission commander and veteran astronaut Jing Haipeng, 45, and Liu Wang, 43. Their mission, which is expected to last at least 10 days, is China's fourth manned mission. Shenzhou 9 launched on 16 June from the Jiuquan centre on the edge of the Gobi desert in northern China. China is hoping to join the US 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 in around 2020. That station is to weigh about 60 tonnes, slightly smaller than Nasa's Skylab of the 1970s and about one-sixth the size of the 16-nation International Space Station.Orbiter.ch Space News: China completes manual space module docking
