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Rocket launches Chinese space lab

fd24

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Jun 23, 2011
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A rocket carrying China's first space laboratory, Tiangong-1, has launched from the north of the country.
The Long March vehicle lifted clear from the Jiuquan spaceport in the Gobi Desert at 21:16 local time (13:16 GMT).
It will be a few hours before controllers can confirm that the lab has been put in its correct orbit.
The 10.5m-long, cylindrical module will be unmanned for the time being, but the country's astronauts, or yuhangyuans, are expected to visit it next year.
Tiangong means "heavenly palace" in Chinese.
The plan is for the module to operate in an autonomous mode, monitored from the ground. Then, in a few weeks' time, China will launch another unmanned spacecraft, Shenzhou 8, and try to link the pair together.
This rendezvous and docking capability is a prerequisite if larger structures are ever to be assembled in orbit.
Assuming the Shenzhou 8 venture goes well, two manned missions (Shenzhou 9 and 10) should follow in 2012. The yuhangyuans - two or three at a time - are expected to live aboard the conjoined vehicles for up to two weeks.
China has promised to build a fully fledged space station at the end of the decade.

• Tiangong-1 will launch on the latest version of a Long March 2F rocket
• The lab will go into a 300-400km-high orbit and will be untended initially
• An unmanned Shenzhou vehicle will later try to dock with Tiangong
• The orbiting lab will test key technologies such as life-support systems
• China's stated aim is to build a 60-tonne space station by about 2020

Congrats to China.!!


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15112760
 
will be released soon but please click onto the link and there is more info

I got one

131168235_21n.jpg
 

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