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Official Says China Plans Space Station

Posted on: Wednesday, 15 October 2003, 06:00 CDT

BEIJING (AP) - China will eventually launch a space lab and then a space station, a senior space official said Thursday, hours after the return of its first manned capsule from orbit.

"The successful mission of Shenzhou 5 is the first step of China's space program," said Zhang Qingwei, the second most senior officer in charge of the country's space program, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

The report didn't give any details, but it was the most explicit declaration yet of official support for plans for a long-term Chinese manned presence in space. Beijing has no involvement in the Western-led International Space Station.

Foreign experts had long believed Beijing was studying the possibility of a possible orbital station. And Chinese scientists talk of hopes for a mission to the moon or even Mars. But space program leaders had previously avoided expressing official support for such plans.

That attitude appeared to change following the safe landing early Thursday of the Shenzhou 5 and astronaut Yang Liwei.

"The task to be performed immediately after Shenzhou 5 is to develop technologies ensuring precise docking between spaceship and orbit module, which are key to the planned setting up of China's space labs," Xinhua paraphrased Zhang as saying.

After that, Xinhua said, China "will focus on developing more efficient and reliable vehicles able to launch a space station."

Zhang was cited as saying a station would "prepare China for further exploration of ... outer space."

Foreign experts say technology developed by China's secretive, military-linked manned space program suggests it is meant to build toward some form of long-term orbital presence.

Shenzhou capsules are equipped with maneuvering rockets that would be needed for docking in space. Experts say China used four earlier unmanned test launches to practice firing capsules into precise orbits that would allow pilots to link vessels together or travel regularly to an orbital station.

Phillip Clark, a British expert on the Chinese program, has suggested that one possibility might be an automated orbital laboratory that could be visited by astronauts several times a year.

That would allow the station to conduct zero-gravity experiments and do other sensitive work that might be disrupted by the vibrations causd by human inhabitants, according to Clark.

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