Shenzhou-9 reaches orbit

Posted By Jason Davis

2012/06/16 12:08 CDT

Topics: mission status, human spaceflight, Chinese human spaceflight

China’s fourth human spaceflight mission got underway this morning after a Long March 2F rocket blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 10:37 UTC. Perched atop the launch vehicle were taikonauts Jing Haipeng, Liu Wang and Liu Yang in their Shenzhou-9 spacecraft. Liu Yang is the country’s first female taikonaut, reaching space on the forty-ninth anniversary of cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s historic Vostok 6 flight.

Launch video:

Shenzhou-9 reached its preliminary orbit approximately nine minutes, forty-five seconds into flight, as it separated from the Long March 2F's core stage. The spacecraft is expected to dock with Tiangong-1 on Monday, kicking off an expected ten-day aboard China’s first space station.

Photo gallery: Shenzhou-9 crew (Xinhua news agency)
Photo gallery: launch (Xinhua news agency)

Xinhua news agency / Qin Xian'an

Shenzhou-9 crew training

The crew of Shenzhou-9 trains in a capsule simulator. From left to right: Liu Wang, Jing Haipeng and Liu Yang.

Comments:

bware: 06/27/2012 10:51 CDT

Thanks Jason! That is a great story and video link! Thanks also for not clipping it down to fragmented bites only! It is interesting to see that they use engineering camera techniques as we do which is mre so than Russia. I noticed their arms are not a strong as ours due to the 4 cables per arm for support. They are seen clearly in the arm retraction.