A new player in orbit

This decade also brought a new, third player into the field of manned space flight operations—the Chinese. Long thought to have keen interest in developing human space flight capability, a planned program to place Chinese citizens in space in the 1970s was abandoned due to more pressing difficulties in the country. In 1992 a new manned space flight program was authorized, and from 1999 a series of unmanned test flights of the Shenzhou vehicle finally qualified the system to put a man into space.

In October 2003, taikonaut (or yuhangyuan) Liwei Yang flew Shenzhou 5 on a 21-hour mission, certifying the vehicle for human space flight operations. Two years later, in October 2005, a trio of taikonauts flew Shenzhou 6 on a five-day manned test flight, qualifying the vehicle for more extensive operations. It would be almost three years later, in September 2008, before the next Shenzhou crew entered orbit. This was also a three-man mission, but much shorter, with the specific objective of performing the first Chinese EVA. This was accomplished by mission commander Zhai Zhigang on September 27, 2008. All of these missions were explained by the Chinese authorities as planned steps toward the creation of a small space research laboratory, leading to larger space stations and eventually to Chinese manned expeditions to the Moon.

The first decade of the 21st century would put in place the infrastructure to expand the capabilities of the U. S., Russia, and the other partners in the ISS program, and to support the future direction that would be pursued over the coming two decades. The emergence of China added a whole new element to human space exploration and the appearance of their first space laboratory signals their intention to create a permanent presence in space, possibly far beyond low Earth orbit.