ShenZhou 8 Spaceflight Mission
Last updated: 21 April 2008
In November 2005, the chief designer of the CZ-2F launch vehicle, Liu Zhusheng, told a Chinese newspaper that following the ShenZhou 7 mission, PRC would launch an unmanned spacecraft Shenzhou 8. Equipped with two docking ports, the spacecraft would serve as a target for rendezvous docking.
The first docking operation would be carried out using a second unmanned spacecraft ShenZhou 9. The docking operation would be controlled by the ground command station with no astronauts carried inside the spacecraft.
Then a manned spacecraft (ShenZhou 10?) would be launched to dock with the pre-docked ShenZhou 8 and Shenzhou 9 modules. The docking operation will be carried out under the control of the mission crew. It was also confirmed that all three missions would be achieved using the existing CZ-2F launch vehicle and the three launches could be carried out “within a month”.
According to the Chinese official media reports in November 2005, the first ground test of the spacecraft docking and buffering was successfully carried out by Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST). SAST is responsible for the development of the docking system for the ShenZhou spacecraft.
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| An artist impression of Shenzhou 8 spacecraft docking with the target spacecraft in the orbit (Source: Chinese Internet) |
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