Unfortunately, they were already fighting a losing battle even before the rocket launched.Ī few hours before the launch of the Shenzhou spacecraft, the state-controlled news website Xinhuanet published an article documenting the successful orbital insertion of the three-man crew. Insofar as China’s efforts in space, they needed to be sure that they were 100% authentic and transparent with the world. The western world has it’s problems, but at least we’re not controlled by the state (at least we think we’re not… are we?). Of course there is a searing discontent toward China, after all this regime is responsible for human rights breaches, suppression of freedom and control of information. There have been a few websites now pointing the finger at this “faked” Chinese space walk, primarily anti-government websites (such as the Epoch Times, who provides no references to the “Chinese bloggers” they cite), plus pro-Taiwanese commenters. Unfortunately the version I used (above), has some rather annoying commentary with it. After discussing this with Captain Jack over at Paranormal Radio in last week’s regular show on October 3rd ( listen to the recording), I began to replay the video over and over to watch for the anomalies. First, let’s have a look at the video montage I used as a reference (primarily because this YouTube video had a “high quality” version):Īt first I was more than a little intrigued by this video. OK, Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy beat me to the punch on this one, but I thought I’d contribute my 2c worth. It can therefore be expected, as with space flight achievements by the US and Russia before, there will be some conspiracy theories out there… The launch, orbital insertion, space walk, re-entry and landing were all executed perfectly, securing China as only the third nation to successfully carry out an extra-vehicular activity (EVA). The space walk lasted a total of 15 minutes, enough time to retrieve some solid lubricant from the outer hull of the Shenzhou-7 module and to give the brand new “Feitian” space suit a trial run. Scene frozen at 26 seconds into video when object 1 is seen (CCTV)Ĭhina successfully launched three taikonauts into Earth orbit and, on September 27th, the first Chinese national (41 year old fighter pilot Zhai Zhigang) walked in space. Object number and time in video included. Red tracks are the visual 'start' and 'finish' of the objects, blue tracks are lines drawn back to possible origin. Tracks of seven objects during Chinese space walk.
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