Chinese astonauts complete docking

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Astronauts on the Shenzhou 10 spacecraft manually docked with the Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) 1, a trial space laboratory module on Sunday (June 23), state media reported.

State television CCTV broadcast images of astronaut Nie Haisheng seated in the middle, in charge of the operation, while his deputy Zhang Xiaoguang and female astronaut Wang Yaping monitored data and kept logs during the exercise.

The Shenzhou 10 spacecraft was launched from a remote site in the Gobi desert in China's far west on June 11, and carried out a successful automatic docking with the Tiangong 1 on June 13.

After manually separating from the space module, the two orbiting vessels connected again, CCTV showed.

The three astronauts will re-enter the Tiangong 1 and carry out more experiments, CCTV said.