Mission type | Test flight |
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COSPAR ID | 2011-063A |
SATCAT no. | 37859 |
Mission duration | 18 days |
Spacecraft properties | |
Spacecraft type | Shenzhou |
Start of mission | |
Launch date | 31 October 2011, 21:58:10.430 UTC |
Rocket | Long March 2F |
Launch site | Jiuquan, LA-4/SLS-1 |
Contractor | China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) |
End of mission | |
Landing date | 17 November 2011, 11:32 UTC |
Landing site | Siziwang Banner, Inner Mongolia |
Orbital parameters | |
Reference system | Geocentric orbit |
Regime | Low Earth orbit |
Inclination | 51.37° |
Docking with Tiangong-1 | |
Docking date | 2 November 2011, 17:28 UTC |
Docking with Tiangong-1 | |
Docking date | 14 November 2011, 12:07 UTC |
Undocking date | 16 November 2011, 10:30 UTC |
Time docked | 1 day, 22 hours, 23 minutes |
Shenzhou 8 | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Chinese | 神舟八号 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Shenzhou 8 (Chinese: 神舟八号) was an uncrewed flight of China's Shenzhou program,[1] launched on 31 October 2011 UTC, or 1 November 2011 in China, by a Long March 2F rocket which lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.[2]
The Shenzhou 8 spacecraft was automatically docked with the Tiangong-1 space module (launched on 29 September 2011) on 3 November 2011 and again on 14 November 2011.[3] This uncrewed docking – China's first – was followed in 2012 with the crewed Shenzhou 9 mission, which performed a crewed docking (also China's first) with the Tiangong-1 module.[1][4] Only the Soviet Union (Russia), Japan[5] and the European Space Agency (ESA) had achieved automatic rendezvous and docking prior to China's accomplishment.
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