China sent two astronauts into space on Monday to dock with an orbiting space lab, marking a crucial step toward the country’s ambition to build and operate its first space station by 2022.
The launch of the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft, witnessed by a group of foreign and domestic media from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in western Gansu province, is Beijing’s third mission to space this year.
The world’s second-largest economy has spent billions in the past decade to compete in a space race with the U.S. and Russia, as well as Asian rivals India and Japan, with ambitious plans eventually to send an astronaut to the moon by about 2025 and to land an unmanned vehicle on Mars .... http://www.bloomberg.com
