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Chinese Crew Completes Manual Docking With Orbiting Module

Posted by timothy on Saturday June 23, 2012 @09:21PM from the one-of-the-best-things-to-do-in-space dept.

A few days back, the crew of the Shenzhou 9 were along for the ride as their craft docked to — or rather, was docked to — an orbiting module. On Sunday, the docking procedure was repeated, but under the direction of the Chinese astronauts themselves rather than controllers on the ground.

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Re:Congradulations China by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 21:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

I love the smell of butthurt American in the morning!
Seriously, can't we congratulate for once?
Re:Congradulations China by M1FCJ · 2012-06-23 21:54 · Score: 5, Informative

They tried to join ISS, A certain North American country said "never, never, never!", and it wasn't the Canadians nor Mexico.
Re:Congradulations China by M1FCJ · 2012-06-23 23:46 · Score: 5, Funny

ISS is mainly MIR-2 and its assorted bits and bobs. If Russians decide to go and play their own ball and take Mir-2 bits, the rest would deorbit and burn in no time and the Russians would still have a viable space station.
Re:Is there some special about a manual docking? by M1FCJ · 2012-06-23 23:48 · Score: 5, Informative

Russian automated docking systems used to fail once in a while. The famous Mir-Progress collusion was an attempt on doing a manual docking (to save money by not carrying the automated system which would burn away once the Progress would deorbit) with an unmanned spacecraft (Progress) with the guidance but no control from the manned craft (Mir) which went horribly wrong.