China Open To Human Spaceflight Cooperation

April 26, 2010 at 9:53 am | Posted in Space Law Current Events, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

by Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz with the blog faculty

Source: Aviation Week

By Frank Morring, Jr.

Colorado Springs

China’s human spaceflight program is developing a 13-ton cargo carrier to supply the space station it plans to orbit late this decade, but the program’s leader is ready to discuss using it for International Space Station logistics, as well.

Wang Wenbao, head of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, says his agency is prepared to cooperate across the board on human spaceflight with NASA and other agencies, including joint human missions and unpiloted logistics with the 5.5-ton-payload-capacity cargo vehicle it plans to test after 2014-16.

That would require detailed discussions on a uniform standard for docking and other interfaces, Wang said here in his first interview with Western reporters. He hopes the issue will be addressed during NASA Administrator Charles Bolden’s delayed visit to Beijing.

“We think that a joint spaceflight mission, joint development of space equipment and also joint utilization of space platforms are the most possible field to carry out discussion at the moment,” Wang says.

At one point after U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed on a Bolden visit to China, at their Beijing summit last November, the NASA administrator planned to go directly from last week’s 26th National Space Symposium here to the Chinese capital. But that was put on hold as U.S.-Chinese relations chilled over currency issues and U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan, and Bolden was authorized only to give Wang a friendly greeting at the symposium.

In an address to the symposium, Wang updated plans to launch a 30-ton space station in 2016-22. The Tiangong 1 docking target, set for launch in the first half of 2011, will be followed by Tiangong 2 and 3, versions that will carry more facilities for experiments and a regenerative life-support testbed, respectively. The cargo craft will be tested with Tiangong 3, set for launch in 2014-16, Wang says.

As previously announced, the unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft will attempt an autonomous rendezvous and docking with Tiangong 1 in the second half of 2011. If that mission goes well, Shenzhou 9 and 10 will follow with human crews. If there are problems with Shenzhou 8, Shenzhou 9 also will be an unmanned mission, says Wang.

The stepwise approach follows China’s past practice of moving cautiously through more and more complex missions. The space station’s three pressurized modules will be launched on the planned Long March 5 from the new facility under development on Hainan Island, Wang says. But human crews, and the Tiangong vehicles, he says will continue to fly on the Long March 2F from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center from which the Shenzhous are orbited.

Chinese station crews will probably stay for six-month increments during the station’s 10-year planned service life. Crews will conduct spacewalks for assembly and maintenance, drawing on experience from the Shenzhou 7 mission.

Wang and his party, which includes astronaut Yang Liwei, will travel to Kennedy Space Center early this week. Last year, they hosted a delegation from the Space Foundation, which sponsors the symposium here, on a tour of space-industry facilities that included a visit to the Jiuquan launch center (AW&ST Oct. 12, 2009, p. 45).

Image: CIA Factbook