Coming to a Chinese Launch Pad: Taikonauts!

The Chinese have 'go fever' developing at the Gobi desert Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center for the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft and their first human mission to dock with an orbiting space mini-space laboratory. The mid-June launch campaign is underway for the Long March 2F liquid booster to leap skyward from Inner Mongola to the black of orbital space - some 200 miles above earth.

The world awaits the formal naming of the flight crew, including the first female taikonaut, certainly to be an immediate Chinese and international media sensation. Space officials are soon to make public the names and backgrounds of the taikonauts aboard the Shenzhou 9 set to dock with the Tiangong-1 lab this June.

The Chinese space docking technology was demonstrated with the automated Shenzhou 8 in the fall of last year. The flight plan of Shenzhou 9 calls for the first taikonauts to dock in space with the Tiangong-1 orbiting vehicle, in another Chinese space first.

As multiple nations and private space freighters go to orbit, the Chinese are set to demonstrate long duration 'hang time' of up to 10-days in space with three taikonauts, prepared to spend time in orbit simulating applied-technology to later, in ...