China is rocketing towards its goal of building its own national crewed space station by 2020, around the same time that the U.S.-led International Space Station is scheduled to be retired and de-orbited.On Tuesday, the China National Space Administration successfully launched a rocket carrying its unmanned Shenzhou-8 spacecraft into low-earth orbit, where it is set to rendezvous and dock with the Tiangong-1 module launched in late September, testing the procedures needed to link-up the various components of China’s planned space station.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=105009