TIANGONG SPACE LAB

 

China plans to launch its first space laboratory module later today in a step toward a manned station orbiting Earth, two months after the final shuttle mission halted the U.S.'s ability to put people into orbit.

The Tiangong-1 is due to take off around 9 p.m. local time tonight, according to China's space agency. The liftoff is part of a program that aims to put a man on the moon by 2020 and, together with high-speed trains, the Beijing Olympics

and the world's biggest nuclear-power expansion, serves as a marker for the nation's emergence as a global power.

"China sees space as one of the things that will confirm 'we're now on a par with Western countries, we've entered the club,'" said James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington who specializes in technology and security. "It's prestige, it's catching up with the West and it's exploring ways to overcome the U.S. information advantage."

Today's launch will cement the country's lead over emerging nations such as India, Iran and South Korea that are pumping money into matching rocket and docking technology pioneered by the Soviet Union and U.S. five decades ago. As China expands, the U.S. is scaling back on routine manned missions: President Barack Obama last year scrapped plans to return to the moon, setting a goal instead of making a "leap into the future" of deep-space travel.

The U.S. move away from "chokingly expensive" manned flight is a more sustainable model, said Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Still, with the shuttle grounded, the U.S. is reliant on Russia to fly astronauts to the International Space Station until commercial operators can fill the gap.
Lost Leadership

"It would not be good for China to move forward in the 2020's with a manned lunar program and eventually be ferrying individuals to and from the lunar surface with the U.S. program grounded," she said in a e-mailed response to questions. "Ceding human spaceflight to the Chinese over the long term would have significant strategic leadership implications."

China, which made its first successful manned flight in 2003 aboard the Shenzhou spacecraft, plans to put a capsule on the moon in 2013 and have the technology for a manned mission in 2020, Xu Shijie, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference said on March 3 in Beijing. The country plans to launch its own orbital station in about 2020.

The module to be launched today will be used to practice docking techniques needed before moving to the next phase of building a station, according to the website of China Manned Space Engineering, the country's space agency.