Chinese space lab set to soar

China looks ready to launch a small space lab into orbit, space policy experts report, perhaps as soon as this month.

The 8.5-ton Tiangong I space lab, the next step in China's manned space program, follows three successful launches of Chinese astronauts, or Taikonauts, into orbit in the last decade.

Smaller than NASA's 85-ton Skylab, launched in 1973, Tiangong I will be unmanned when it launches. The lab will mostly serve as a test-bed for as many as two manned docking missions in its two-year lifetime, says space analyst Dean Cheng of the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. "It is a logical move in developing manned space capabilities."

Learning the intricacies of docking one space vehicle with another in space is key for a nation planning long missions, so that vehicles have a way to transfer moon explorers, for example, from a lunar orbiter and return vehicle to a lander. The space lab could also serve as a platform for space medicine and micro-gravity experiments similar to the International Space Station.

Weeks ahead of expectations, Tiangong I's launch looks increasingly likely before August ends, Gregory Kulacki analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists reported Wednesday. A Chinese official, Liang Xiaohong of the Chinese Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, told the Xinhuanews service in March that the prototype lab would launch by the end of 2011, about a year behind its original schedule. China's space agency did not respond to a request for comment from USA TODAY.

Coming amid the U.S. debate over the end of the space shuttle program and future of its astronaut program, the launch will likely get some attention, says space analyst Kevin Pollpeter of Defense Group Inc., in Washington D.C., a federal national security contractor. "No astronauts are slated to go to the station until next year," he says.

Launched by a Long March 2F rocket, Tiangong I will be followed by two similar labs, Tiangong 2 and Tiangong 3, later in the decade, after the first one falls to Earth. Chinese Shenzou space capsules would dock with these labs to transfer crew to them. Cheng compares them to the 1960's U.S. Gemini missions that practiced docking maneuvers in space, prior to the moon landing.

All of the Tiangong missions are warm-ups for construction of a 60-ton space station planned for around 2020. Former NASA official Scott Pace of George Washington University compares that station to Russia's Mir lab of the 1990's, in an upcoming report in the Space Policy journal. Pace notes China's space station would go into orbit about the time the 450-ton International Space Station "may be preparing to close down." (Russian space officials recently said they hoped to keep it up and running until 2028, however, in cooperation with its U.S., Canadian, European and Japanese partners.)

China's move into the space lab business doesn't follow the pattern set by the U.S. and Russian space programs. "China is not in a space race," Cheng says. "Its program is pragmatic and proceeds very carefully." Developing the capability to send people into space, and perhaps someday land them on the moon, drives the program, which makes no distinction between civilian and military space activities.

"You have to practice docking to do both of those things," Cheng says. China is also pursuing a program of robotic moon exploration missions, including a planned lander and rover that will return moon rock samples to Earth. "My sense is that China will eventually announce a plan to land men on the moon, for reasons of national politics and prestige," Cheng says.

Although NASA administrator Charles Bolden has visited China, major space cooperation between the two nations appears unlikely due to espionage and intellectual property theft concerns, says Cheng. "And you wouldn't let someone practice space docking for the first time with the International Space Station anyway," he added. "You don't give a teenager the keys to your Ferrari."

All the same, China has made steady progress in space since the launch of its first satellite in 1970. "The most important implication for the USA from Chinese civil space capabilities is not that the Chinese will be in space, but that the USA may not be," Pace concludes in the Space Policy review. "The rules of international relations in new domains are created by those who show up and not by those who stay home."