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Launch date looms for space module

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Stephen Chenin Beijing

China hopes to resume its nascent effort to build a space station with the launch next week of an orbiting laboratory module that scientists hope will provide a training platform for space rendezvous.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced on its website yesterday plans to send its Tiangong - or 'heavenly palace' - module into orbit from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in Gansu .

But the launch - scheduled for a window between Tuesday and the following Friday - has been delayed for more than a month as investigators scrambled to figure out what caused another rocket to veer off course and fail last month during a satellite launch.

That LM-2 rocket was similar to the model that CNSA hopes to use to launch the Tiangong module into orbit. Authorities feared the expensive module, a core component of a planned mid-sized orbiting laboratory, could also be lost, if the problem went unresolved.

A panel of experts assigned to investigate the August 18 failure traced the problem to small secondary thruster used to control the rocket's ascent, Xinhua reported.

The thruster apparently lost connection with its servo, an automatic error correction device, and misfired, sending the rocket off course, said the project operator, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. Similar vernier engines appeared in older rockets, such as the US Atlas-family of space-launch vehicles, but have since been abandoned by Nasa.

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