State news agency Xinhua is reporting that China is planning to launch a manned spacecraft later this month. A Shenzhou-9 capsule and rocket are already in place, and when it launches it'll manually dock with the nation's space station: Tiangong-1. The nation is moving quickly to capitalize on its successes last year, after learning how to dock two objects in high-speed orbit. Once both are linked up, the three astronauts on-board would move across to perform scientific experiments before returning to Earth in the craft, as you do.

[Image Credit: China Daily]

China planning manned mission to its own space station, didn't want to be on the ISS anyway originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jun 2012 06:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.