{"id":140687,"date":"2022-06-16T18:22:17","date_gmt":"2022-06-16T23:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/10-years-ago-china-docked-to-its-space-station-and-changed-the-space-race-forever"},"modified":"2022-06-16T18:22:17","modified_gmt":"2022-06-16T23:22:17","slug":"10-years-ago-china-docked-to-its-space-station-and-changed-the-space-race-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/10-years-ago-china-docked-to-its-space-station-and-changed-the-space-race-forever","title":{"rendered":"10 years ago, China docked to its space station \u2014 and changed the space race forever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ux8LxhYLUQQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Ten years ago today, China sent a crew to its thus-far unoccupied Tiangong-1 space station. When the crew arrived two days later, the nation joined Russia and the United States in a rarified spacefaring club that marked the beginning of China\u2019s space ascent.<\/p>\n<p>On June 16, 2012, the China Manned Space Agency <a href=\"https:\/\/planet4589.org\/space\/jsr\/back\/news.660.txt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\">launched<\/a> the Shenzhou-9 mission. Its three-person crew \u2014 commander Jing Haipeng, major Liu Wang, and China\u2019s first woman in space, major Liu Yang \u2014 flew into Earth orbit atop a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inverse.com\/article\/17522-china-s-long-march-7-successfully-launched-here-s-everything-we-know\">Long March<\/a> rocket from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center near <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inverse.com\/article\/26944-bolortsetseg-minjin-mongolia-dinosaur-museum-paleontology-tarbosaur-gobi-desert\">Mongolia<\/a> in the Gobi Desert. They successfully docked with China\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inverse.com\/science\/how-china-will-build-tiangong\">Tiangong-1<\/a> space lab on June 18.<\/p>\n<p>It was a long time coming. In 2008, China successfully docked its Shenzhou 8 craft to the Tiangong-1 space station. But both the space station and its new addition were uncrewed, guided on the ground by mission control. That left it up to the Shenzhou 9 crew to make history by taking it literally into their own hands. Taikonaut Liu Wang piloted Shenzhou 9 toward Tiangong-1, easing into position for a soft docking. After securing various bolts and locks, ground control began equalizing the air pressure between the capsule and station. Three hours later, the crew entered the station.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ten years ago today, China sent a crew to its thus-far unoccupied Tiangong-1 space station. When the crew arrived two days later, the nation joined Russia and the United States in a rarified spacefaring club that marked the beginning of China\u2019s space ascent. On June 16, 2012, the China Manned Space Agency launched the Shenzhou-9 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":631,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/631"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}