On Thursday China's space programme hailed its first ever docking exercise in outer space, conducted by an unmanned spacecraft, launched this week, with a space laboratory module .It is a step seen as a crucial landmark along China's road to launch its own space station in the next decade.
China is now the third country to accomplish a docking exercise in space, after the United States and Russia. Both those countries carried out similar exercises more than three decades ago.
While China still continues to lag the two countries in its space technology, Beijing hopes to close the gap by becoming the third country to put into orbit its own space station, by 2020 .
Thursday's docking exercise between Tiangong-1 and Shenzhou-8, which will fly together for 12 days and conduct another docking exercise, was hailed by Chinese leaders as a vital step towards taking forward the space programme.
China's commercial satellite industry has widened its reach overseas, launching satellites for more than 20 countries. The official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary on Thursday China “always express willingness to open its space vessels and facilities to the international science community”.
If completed in around 2020 as planned, the China-made space station might replace the ISS to harbour internationally collaborative space science experiments.
