The chief designer of China’s manned space programme, Zhou Jiaping, speaking now at the National Space Symposium’s international space agency session, has just said that after Shenzhou-9 docks with the target vehicle Tiangong-1 the country will launch a spacelab module and then a cargo vehicle that will dock with that laboratory. This two-spacecraft complex will be joined by a Shenzhou spacecraft. The lab module, cargo vehicle and Shenzhou are the three spacecraft types and together they make up the space lab. Zhou called this the second stage of the manned programme
The comments by Zhou add detail to his 31 March interview with Flight
