Shenzhou 7 mission countdown
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- Date: Sep 23,2008
The Shenzhou 7 mission, to launch as early as Thursday, will be the first to carry a full complement of three astronauts, one of whom will perform China’s first spacewalk, or EVA for “extra-vehicular activity.” It is China’s third manned mission.
The maneuver will help China master docking techniques needed for the construction of a space station, likely to be achieved initially by joining one Shenzhou orbiter to another.
The mission launches from the Jiuquan launch site in northwestern China. The lead astronaut, Zhai Zhigang, is expected to carry out the 40-minute spacewalk, which China will broadcast live.
“Shenzhou 7 is an incremental but important step forward,” said Joan Johnson-Freese, an expert on the Chinese space program at the U.S. Naval War College in Rhode Island.
Riding a wave of pride and patriotism after hosting the Olympics, China’s communist leaders face few of the public doubts or budgetary pressures constraining such programs elsewhere. That has allowed them to fuse political will and scientific gusto in a step-by-step process that could one day see Chinese astronauts landing on the moon.
Chinese space programs are methodically moving forward in a “very deliberate, graduated” manner, said Charles Vick, a space analyst for the Washington think tank GlobalSecurity.org. Beijing is accumulating the building blocks of a comprehensive program, demonstrating “caution but confidence” as it gains on the U.S. and other space powers, he said. Shenzhou 7 mission countdown
