Thursday, June 13, 2013

China Has A What?!!



Yep, my little motorcycle dude hit me with another today.  Check this out....China has a space station.
Yeah you read that right - on June 13th just two days after launch, a Chinese Shenzhou 10 space capsule carrying a crew of three docked with the nation's orbiting Tiangong 1 space module .

According to the Space.com article the crew consisted of :
  •  Nie Haisheng, Zhang Xiaoguang and Wang Yaping — the second female Chinese astronaut to fly in space 
Now for more DAMN I DIDN'T KNOW THAT! stuff..... This was China's fifth manned mission (oh come on!)  This is the last of three missions to test space based docking procedures.   The Tiangong 1 has been orbiting Earth since Sept. 2011. Its schedule calls for it to remain operational for another three months.  This crew is the second to dock with the module.  

China plans to take what they learn here and apply it to a larger station in 2020 which eventually have 3 interconnected modules.

Here is the link to the complete space.com article

6 comments:

Dave Tackett said...

China's space program doesn't really get enough attention over here. You can find fairly good information at the "Dragon Space" section of Space Daily, but the mainstream media never covers it. But since they barely, and often inaccurately, cover NASA, this isn't too surprising.

kallamis said...

Considering the media and so called journalists today Dave, I would frankly be surprised if 98% of them can even dress themselves. I miss Walter Cronkite. And thanks for the heads up to the Space Daily. I hadn't come across that one yet I don't think.

Beam Me Up said...

Walt loved space, he was viewed as something of a pest by the space agency because he wanted to know it all and he wasn't ashamed by his interest and enthusiasm. He was a constant presence as NASA grew and apollo developed. The man actually cried on national television when Neal stepped off the ladder.

If he were alive today he would be puckin in a bucket every time he heard that Americans have to ride a Soyuz to get to the station and again with how his contemplates handle news about China's space program.

Thanks for the tip Dave, I will pass that on!

henryii said...

wow....cool......still can't understand why the world ignores this country.the US and Russia could have easily included the Chinese in building and manning the ISS.
oh well congrats go to them....good job.....

henryii said...

congratulations to China.
the USA and Russia as well as the rest of the world space agencies have ignored them and it is good to see they can do it themselves.
thanks for letting some of us in the world know they did it....
our news channels are to busy hosting talk shows.....but then the web missed it too......i miss the world news.........thanks again.

Beam Me Up said...

Henryii Politics rears its nasty head again. You can bet at the planning table Russia stipulated that if China was in on the deal, Russia would pull all support and vice- versa