Shenzhou 8
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Key facts
- Mission type
- Uncrewed test flight
- Operator
- China Manned Space Agency
- Cospar id
- 2011-063A
- Mission duration
- 16 days, 13 hours, 33 minutes
- Spacecraft type
- Shenzhou
- Manufacturer
- China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation
- Launch date
- 31 October 2011, 21:58:10 UTC
- Rocket
- Long March 2F/G (Y8)
- Launch site
- Jiuquan , LA-4/SLS-1
- Contractor
- China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology
- Landing date
- 17 November 2011, 11:32 UTC
- Landing site
- Siziwang Banner , Inner Mongolia ( 42°14′20″N 111°17′53″E / 42.239°N 111.298°E / 42.239; 111.298 )
- Reference system
- Geocentric orbit
- Regime
- Low Earth orbit
- Perigee altitude
- 330 km (210 mi)
- Apogee altitude
- 343 km (213 mi)
- Inclination
- 51.37°
- Docking date
- 2 November 2011, 17:30 UTC
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- Shenzhou
- Part of
- China Manned Space Program
- Followed by
- Shenzhou 9
- Follows
- Shenzhou 7
- Image
- Tiangong 1 drawing.png
- Significant event
- landing
Show 7 more facts
- Commons category
- Shenzhou-8
- space launch vehicle
- Long March 2F
- UTC date of spacecraft launch
- 2011-10-31
- type of orbit
- low Earth orbit
- UTC date of spacecraft landing
- 2011-11-17
- location of landing
- Inner Mongolia
- start point
- Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~4 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Shenzhou 8 (Chinese: 神舟八号) was an uncrewed flight of China's Shenzhou program, launched on 31 October 2011 UTC, or 1 November 2011 in China, by a Long March 2F/G rocket, an improved version of the 2F making its maiden flight, which lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.
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. 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. Only the Soviet Union (Russia), Japan and the European Space Agency (ESA) had achieved automatic rendezvous and docking prior to China's accomplishment.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Shenzhou 8” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.