China’s human spaceflight program, Project 921, officially began in 1992. The scheduled launch tomorrow of Shenzhou-9 is the ninth flight in the series, but only the fourth to carry a crew.

Shenzhou 1-4 were automated tests of the spacecraft; Shenzhou-8 was an automated test of rendezvous and docking procedures with the Tiangong-1 space station, which also was unoccupied. The following table provides information on the three crewed missions flown to date and tomorrow’s mission.

Mission Launch Date Crew Comments Shenzhou-5 Oct. 15, 2003 Yang Liwei First Chinese human spaceflight mission;

21 hours, 23 min Shenzhou-6 Oct. 12, 2005 Fei Junlong

Nie Haisheng First Chinese 2-person crew;

5 day mission Shenzhou-7 Sept. 25, 2008 Zhai Zhigang

Liu Boming

Jing Haipeng First Chinese 3-person crew;

First Chinese spacewalk (by Zhai for 22 min, Liu

also did stand-up EVA in airlock for about 2 min)

3 day mission;

small (40 kg) subsatellite ejected Shenzhou-9 July 16, 2012

(scheduled) Jing Haipeng

Liu Wang

Liu Yang Scheduled: 10 day mission;

manual docking with Tiangong-1 space station;

Liu Yang first Chinese woman astronaut

The Tiangong-1 space station was launched in September 2011.