The launch of Shenzhou-9 (神舟九号) expected this Saturday 16 June will mark China's first human mission in nearly four years.
So what's new this time around?
Much has been written about this flight carrying China's first female taikonaut, but aside from proving that certain select women have nice teeth, no body odor, or scars that don't bleed, what are the goals of the Shenzhou-9 mission?
In short: experience with rendezvous/docking and longer duration missions, bringing them closer to the capability of other spacefaring nations.
Mission Goals & Operations
Shenzhou-9 is China's fourth manned flight, and will use a Long March 2F rocket to launch from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in central China. It's scheduled to be a two-week mission that will rendezvous and dock with the Tiangong-1 space module. While docked, the crew will test the Tiangong's life support system, perform science experiments and demonstrate technologies needed for the next stage of China's program - a Mir-class space station planned for deployment around 2020. There have been some suggestions that Shenzhou 9 might include an "undocking - re-docking" sequence during the mission in order to further demonstrate docking maneuvers.
Contrary to some articles, the Tiangong-1 module is not best described as a "space station", since that term implies sufficient size and life support capacity to enable long-duration habitation. Tiangong-1 does not possess that capacity. A more accurate description of the vehicle is a "space lab" or habitation module - this is the term that the China space program itself uses. Tiangong-1 is significantly smaller than 1970s Soviet-era Salyut space stations or the American Skylab space station in the same decade. The pressurized volume of Tiangong-1 is about 15 m3, while the Salyut modules were around 99 m3 and Skylab about 320 m3. The Tiangong program, on the other hand, is aimed at the deployment of a proper Mir-sized (c. 350 m3) space station by the end of this decade. For reference, the 2011 configuration of the International Space Station is about 837 m3 of pressurized volume.
Significance for China's Space Program
While China's first piloted docking is a significant milestone, many have noted that this is a roughly equivalent technological level as America's Gemini program in the mid-1960s. This is rather misleading, however. As leading China space policy analyst and professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College Dr. Joan Johnson-Friese points out, Shenzhou-9 "signifies [the] Chinese commitment to incrementally achieving the three-step program they laid out in the 1990s — a patience that will serve them well in the long run."
The three steps Johnson-Freese refers to are those officially announced in the early 1990s:
- Successful launch of humans into orbit and their safe return
- A manned space module
- A manned space station
If Shenzhou-9 is successful, it will therefore mark China's accomplishment of its second goal. Moreover, these goals have been carried out cautiously but in steady progression and more-or-less on schedule. Note that while there are also indications that China seeks a manned lunar landing sometime in the mid to late 2020s, this has not been officially announced - although current press reports are still suggest it may be China's ultimate goal.
For more on the strategies driving China's space program, see my popular post from April.
Female Taikonaut
Following some uncertainty over which of the two announced crews would fly, recent reports suggest that it will consist of Jing Haipeng (commander), Liu Wang (male pilot), and Liu Yang (female pilot).
Johnson-Freese notes that the female taikonaut is important both in garnering greater international attention (and thus bolstering China's national prestige) as well as building more robust popular support for China's program. A female taikonaut will "domestically pleas[e] half the population of a country of 1.3 billion where Mao said women 'hold up half of heaven.'"
This would perhaps reflect a lesson learned from the American program. Space historian Howard McCurdy noted in his book "Space and the American Imagination" that NASA blundered by not sending a female astronaut on a mission until on the seventh Space Shuttle mission in 1983 when Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. Had NASA included women on earlier missions, McCurdy suggests that public support for the U.S. space program may well have been stronger and might have mitigated the strong gender gap in enthusiasm for space that has been observed since the 1980s.
Accomplishments
Among the milestones, Shenzhou-9 will be:
- China's first piloted rendezvous and docking
- The first return visit to space by a taikonaut
- The first female taikonaut
- China's longest mission to date (Shenzhou-7 was a 10 day mission)
- China's first summer launch
The summer launch at Jiuquan may be notable, since temperatures there this week were over 36°C. This may pose difficulties for propellant fueling on the Long March 2F.
Political Context
Finally, Dean Cheng, a China analyst at the Heritage Foundation notes that "This [mission] is occurring in the context of a troubled Chinese leadership transition. Therefore, any trouble with the mission is likely to have bad consequences for the Chinese leadership, as it might be seen as emblematic of poor leadership, poor stewardship of the nation's vital resources, and raise questions about the legitimacy of the incoming leaders."
Image courtesy BBC