China’s “Heavenly Palace” Gets Ready to Head Into Space

By: EW News Desk Team   Date: 23 September 2011

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EW News Desk Team

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23 September 2011

China will embark on its first ever unmanned space program at the end of this month, with the launch of the Tiangong-1 (the “Heavenly Palace-1”) space module from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China's Gansu Province, said state-owned news service Xinhua on Thursday.

Chinese state media reports that the Tiangong-1 will be used as a testing site for a full-fledged space station that the country hopes to deploy by 2020.

"Tiangong - is, I think, primarily a technology test bed," said Joan Johnson-Freese, a U.S.-based expert on China's space program, to AFP.

"The real story is that when they eventually get around to building a space station, it will look nothing like Tiangong. It is a test of a spacecraft that will one day be used as a cargo carrying vessel to a larger space station.”

Officials say that the station is intended for medical and scientific research. However, outside analysts believe that the orbiting space lab will also be a component of China's military expansion, with exact details of the space mission being unclear.

The Tiangong-1 will be launched sometime between September 27-30, with two spaceships scheduled to go on docking missions with the lab next year. Originally, China had planned to launch Tiangong 1's last year, but technical faults led to the launch being delayed.

However, the timing of the new launch could not be better timed, as it comes just before the Chinese National Day holiday.

"The first issue of timing is political, and we all know what happens in October and why October is so important to China. I would say there’s a lot of political pressure to make sure it’s launched before the birthday party," said Morris Jones, a space analyst based in Sydney, as quoted by BusinessDay.

The emergence of China in the space race is significant considering the declining influence of the US in outer space. The US recently decommissioned all of its space shuttles, with NASA now relying on Russian rockets to shuttle its astronauts to space and back.

China’s planned space station launch by 2020 will also be significant as it will be the same year that the International Space Station (I.S.S.) is scheduled to be decommissioned.

"With most space technology dual-use — of value to both civil and military communities — anything done by China in space will have spillover to the military, much the same as Nasa’s technical advancements do in the US," says Johnson- Freese.


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