By Herman Lai, posted Nov 2, 2011 at 4:24 PM, 466 views,

China’s Spacecraft Docking Completed! Steps Into the Aerospace Era (Videos)

What a glory moment just happened! China now has their first space docking on a low earth orbit after its Shenzhou 8 spacecraft launched in the early Tuesday morning, and docked with Tiangong-1 (“Heavenly Palace”) space lab module which launched on the 29 Sep this year. We have got more info, some animations and pictures to show you after the break…

Gallery: The launch of Shenzhou 8

Shenzhou 8 launched on the 1 Nov 2011 at 05:58. After five orbital maneuvers, Shenzhou VIII will enter an orbit below Tiangong-1, which is currently circling 343 km above the Earth’s surface. The purpose of this project is actually a preparation and experimentation for next year manned missions to Tiangong-1 take place, and this project will include nine crew members that to choose from a batch of 14 astronauts and will involve two females astronauts. Why female is in particular? The notion is to verify if human beings can live in space as there are huge differences between men and women in spite of their common generalities. Therefore, the space exploration activity will be incomplete without the participation of female astronauts.

On the 3 Nov 2011, at 01:43, Shenzhou 8 completed docking with Tiangong-1, the entire docking process took 15 minutes to complete. It is now the most historic moment for the development of China’s aerospace, and has taken a key step for China to establish a manned laboratory in the space.

There are some key things that we have noticed about the Heavenly Palace. The very first thing is the Physiological signal, which to detect the astronauts’ ECG, respiration, body temperature, blood pressure signal. However, this time is an experimentation and the spacecraft did not have any astronauts yet, so there are some mock-up humans with physiological signal installed on them.

Secondly, we noticed there is a kitchen within the spacecraft, which is going to provide sufficient foods and drinks for astronauts daily life.

Shenzhou 8 brought 1 kg of REAL foods along, and they are for emergency use. However, Shenzhou 8 is an unmanned spacecraft, controlled and guided by the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center, so why does it need foods? Well, the reason is because they want to test out whether the packages can withstand the spacecraft vibration and shock, such as whether bag leak damage, food availability shattered and so forth.

Lastly, astronauts will not have to wear cabin space suit inside the space station, because the palace will provide a suitable environment for them to live on supported by some kind of technology that would balance the humanity, temperature and the flow of air within the space station, just like an “Air-Conditioner“.

Basically, that’s it. China’s aerospace is developing in an insanely fast rate. Let’s see what surprise would the upcoming Shenzhou 9 and Shenzhou 10 bring to us.

Source: Xinhua, Sina, Shanghaiist, cnBeta