Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
They were confident they could do it, and they did it. Just a few days after Chinese officials said with unusual boldness that they expected no trouble in achieving their first space docking, the Shenzhou 8 capsule opened the way for the Chinese manned space program by closing on the Tiangong 1 docking target and solidly connecting to it.
CHINA CAPSULE DOCKS: China’s unmanned Shenzhou 8 capsule performed the first of two planned orbital docking maneuvers with the Tiangong 1 target module on Nov. 3, marking an essential milestone as the country mounts plans to orbit its own space station. Official state media, while keen to play up the propaganda value of the docking, frankly noted that the U.S. had coupled two spacecraft in orbit 45 years ago with the Gemini 8 mission.
BEIJING — The modified Long March 2F rocket that launched China’s Shenzhou 8 capsule on Nov. 1 performed with exceptional precision, space program officials say.
