China planning manned mission to its own space station, didn't want to be on the ISS

GSBot · June 11, 2012, 10:30am

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2012/06/0013729ece6b0feec0ab17.jpg State news agency Xinhua is reporting that China is planning to launch a manned spacecraft later this month. A Shenzhou-9 capsule and rocket are already in place, and when it launches it’ll manually dock with the nation’s space station: Tiangong-1. The nation is moving quickly to capitalize on its successes last year, after learning how to dock two objects in high-speed orbit. Once both are linked up, the three astronauts on-board would move across to perform scientific experiments before returning to Earth in the craft, as you do.
[Image Credit: China Daily]
China planning manned mission to its own space station, didn’t want to be on the ISS anyway originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jun 2012 06:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink