June 11th, 2013
09:58 AM ET
Chinese spaceship blasts off from Gobi Desert
By Katie Hunt and Zhang Dayu, CNN
Chinese spaceship blasted off Tuesday from a launch center in the Gobi Desert, carrying three astronauts on what is expected to be the Asian giant's longest crewed mission yet.
Propelled by a Long March-2F rocket, the Shenzhou 10 craft is scheduled to dock with the Tiangong-1 space module where the crew will transfer supplies to the space lab, which has been in orbit since September 2011.
China has stepped up the pace of its space program since first sending astronaut Yang Liwei into orbit in 2003. In 2012, it conducted 18 space launches, according to the Pentagon.
Tuesday's launch from the the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center marks the start of China's fifth crewed space mission.
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People in Orbit
Cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov
Expedition 36 Commander
Expedition 36 Commander
Cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin
Expedition 36 Flight Engineer
Expedition 36 Flight Engineer
Cosmonaut Chris Cassidy
Expedition 36 Flight Engineer
Expedition 36 Flight Engineer
Contributors
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Elizabeth Landau
Writer/Producer -
Sophia Dengo
Senior Designer
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Anybody know where i can purchase some 2-million sun block?
Great! ISS has got a neighbor. I wonder if the host of ISS has knocked on the door of CSS and brought some presents to its neighbor. Congratulations and Godspeed!
Great! ISS has got a neighbor. I wonder if ISS has knocked on the door of CSS and brought some presents to its neighbor. Congratulations and Godspeed!
i think space programs are so misguided, exoplanetes are real and other earth's are a near certainty, wasting tons of money on programs devoted to mars seem well stupid, people should focus on the sun, look at how fast a solar flare moves off a very strong gravitaitional force (escape velocity), now imagine putting that into a gas tank in free space, i was reading that free space is soooo cold that we can nearly touch the surface of the sun before burning up, if you could put satelites into a close orbit around our star you could maybe capture some of the gooey goodness trapped (the haze) like clouds around the sun or maybe we could even make shape charges out of nukes and use them as energy (think of the bullet in space) – could we controll a nuke in free space? all one for the r/d people...better than worm holes though and the concept that because space is bent (still have not sold me on it though) that we are looking at a curvature, sorry folks but my eyes don't bend, when i look at a star, it is looking at the shortest possible route, but seriously think of how one type of object covers the largest spread in the universe, stars do in fact move and they move very very fast
the real trick though is manufacturing the bright light we see in the corona (what always happens before they move), perhaps that involves pressure (build up of gas), and also it isn't from the surface that they always go off from, once you get ahold of that stuff humans could make it work
Nanu-Nanu! Shazbot!
While Congress fiddles our scientific research molds. We haven't "kept the dream alive" at all. They way it looks, our manned space program will be planned and funded by the 2%(ers), so the wealthy can have million dollar suborbital joy rides!
It's all faked anyways. Most of it is just CGI computer generated images.
You may foolishly believe America does that, but the Chinese will do it the old fashion way. And when our unmanned robotic Mars science explorers happen upon human artifacts, they won't be from an ancient civilization, but discards from a 21st century Chinese manned Mars expeditionary mission.
Seriously? Jeez – not that sh1t AGAIN!!
'Faked'? Seriously!? Just when I thought the internet and some of its denizens couldn't get any more banal or stupid... Three people get on a Long March rocket, it launches and disappears over the horizon, you can mathematically work out its trajectory with a calculator, let alone a desktop or laptop computer as to when it will re-appear – then SEE it fly overhead later in orbit with your OWN eyes... And with the right telescopic gear you can even SEE the shape of the ISS YOURSELF!! Where did this 'it's all fake' garbage come from? Who started this idiotic internet meme? They need a good kicking. It's even WORSE than the 'Moon Hoax' rubbish, if that's possible. Space exploration is REAL, for god's sake. Over 500 human beings have been into space. End of story. Their experiences were REAL. Hundreds of people are going to fly into sub-orbital space on Virgin Galactic – one of them is going to be ME. So I suppose we are all part of some great, liars conspiracy?! Please, someone – make all this conspiracy cr4p go away, once and for all.
you know what tony what is there to live for if people can't get rich, but anyways in the near future you will see people travel around the planet in near earth orbits, the technology is already there, once you get into orbit and travel at earth's orbital speed you expend no energy and you can get anywhere on the planet in under an hour, it is economical (i read where the space shuttle get 19 mpg) when you consider that a cessna gets about 8 if i am not mistaken, how nasa calculates that i think is one for the people who make the budget though, you have to get into orbit without rockets propelling you i think for it to be REALLY economical but nonetheless we can at this very moment put humans from nyc to tokyo in under an hour, really remarkable when you think about a 24 hour trip or more (idk)
We've been saying this for years......1 hour flights from say London to Beijing....but now with advanced electronic communications ....what's the point. Of course their will be need for face to face meetings etc... But I don't think it will be on a scale you propose. For tourism, I think half the fun is getting there. My point was only concerning a bunch of politicians, with no vision beyond their next election, making scientific decisions that in time will effect all mankind. 🙂