GOLDEN, Colo. — China is stepping up and out in the world of space exploration.

Space officials in that country are readying the Shenzhou 7 spacecraft for an October sendoff, one that will carry a trio of their "taikonauts" into Earth orbit. The mission not only promises to strengthen China's human space travel agenda, but also provides a glimpse into actions to be undertaken in the future.

China has initiated a step-by-step approach in flying their taikonauts: The single-person Shenzhou 5 flight in 2003 of 14 orbits; the two-person voyage of Shenzhou 6 in 2005 lasting 5 days; and soon to head skyward, a threesome of space travelers. And on this flight, one of those space travelers is to carry out China's first spacewalk, also known as extravehicular activity, or EVA for short.

In some ways, the upcoming mission spotlights the hop, skip, and jump abilities of China in comparison to U.S. space history.

For the U.S., the Mercury series of single-seat flights led to the two-person missions of Gemini spacecraft, followed by sojourns of the Apollo three-person crew capsule. More to the point, in the U.S., the first human-carrying orbital flight of Mercury was in 1962; Gemini in 1965; and Apollo in 1968.

So is there a true measure of growth, albeit somewhat skewed given the driving nature of the Soviet Union versus the U.S. "Moon race"?

Case in point: If this next mission for China is successful in attaining orbit, that country will have taken something like a year less time to move from single-seat orbital flight to Apollo three-seat space travel - contrasted to U.S. human spaceflight progress in Earth orbit.

Learning curve

On one hand, China's steadfast evolution in human space treks is laudable. On the other, given that status card, leading spaceflight aficionados seem to sense different take-home messages.

"Implications, as far as I can see...few, if any," said Joan Johnson-Freese, an analyst of China's space policy and Chair of the National Security Decision-Making Department at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I.

Johnson-Freese told SPACE.com that the U.S. Mercury program of the 1960s was spearheading research just to see if humans could swallow in space...or how the human psyche would react once in Earth orbit. There were lots of medical questions, she noted.

NASA's Project Mercury was quickly followed by a salvo of 10 human-carrying Gemini flights from March 1965 to November 1966. All-in-all, piloted Mercury and Gemini orbital outings tally up to 14 flights in five years, Johnson-Freese observed — and don't forget those two earlier and piloted suborbital Mercury missions.

"Technology development was incremental because it was all new, but consistent," Johnson-Freese stressed.

"The Chinese will have three flights with a successful mission next fall. They have been able to benefit from lots of lessons learned from both the Americans and the Russians. That is not to downplay the difficulty of the technology or the achievements of the Chinese...they just have the luxury of starting much higher on the learning curve," she concluded.

Pow...pow...pow

Given the years of mastering human space travel, is China's blossoming to-do list in order to operate in Earth orbit worth spotlighting?

"Yes, absolutely...it is worth flagging," said Dean Cheng, an Asian affairs specialist at the U.S.-based Center for Naval Analysis in Alexandria, Virginia. 

"Now, the flip side to that, of course, is that it has also been done before. So it's not like they need to engineer everything from scratch," Cheng told SPACE.com, adding that China can depend on designs similar to those proven to work by the U.S. and former Russians. "But, yes, it is nonetheless impressive."

Cheng points out, however: "The main difference ...there were more Mercury and Gemini flights in the intervening period. What is interesting about the Chinese effort is that they are doing it with so few flights. Four unmanned flights...then pow-pow- pow...one-man, two-man, three-man/EVA."

Cheng also underscored the built-in danger to nations that ramp up human spaceflight expertise. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union lost people during their respective run-ups.

"You have to wonder if the Chinese can sustain a perfect space record," he added. "Obviously, one hope's that they can."

Take-away knowledge

In terms of where China is really headed in human spaceflight, crystal ball gazing is not easy.

Stacking up their one-two-three punch in the field of human spaceflight against U.S. space program heritage doesn't quite match up, said Roger Launius, senior curator for the Division of Space History at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

"Learning what China needs to know about conducting a lunar trip, probably a circumlunar trip, on three missions seems a bit thin to me," Launius told SPACE.com.

While Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs might have been exceptionally cautious — and thus took more time and a greater number of missions than the Chinese effort — the knowledge return from the American programs versus China's three flights cannot be anywhere near each other, Launius explained.

"Let's take the Gemini program," Launius said. "A central reason for it was to perfect techniques for rendezvous and docking, EVA, and long duration flight. Assuming that these same skills will be required in a Chinese moon program, and I believe they will, where will the knowledge and experience for them come from in these three missions?"

Launius said that the Gemini flights swamp China in terms of demonstrated skills. The country has yet to rack up the experience base of spacewalking, rendezvous and docking that is now standard in the U.S. and Russia, he added.

 "A core question, it seems to me, is this: "Will ground simulation be able to compensate for the lack of orbital experience?" Launius said. "Perhaps, but I'm not sure."

More acclaim than deserved?

Stepping back and taking a larger look at where China's human space program is headed, Launius observed: "Personally, I think the Chinese program is moving forward at a modest pace and is getting a lot of mileage out of the fact that it is a secret effort that forces us to speculate about it. It is receiving among the space community more acclaim than I think it deserves."

Launius said that there's enough in China's statements on future manned moon missions to fuel Western speculation that the country has a vast program, immensely capable, and seeking to at least equal the Americans in a Moon program of its own.

"There is no official Chinese evidence to support the concept of a Chinese human moon program, despite the wishes of some inside the Chinese space program who would love to do it. Occasionally, someone will say something about this to Western media but official documents available do not say anything about such a program," Launius said.

There are those in the U.S. space community that would like to see China hell-bent on sending taikonauts onto the moon's surface, Launius said, because they believe it would spark a new space race. "I'm not sure that would be the outcome of these Chinese efforts...but I also see no evidence for serious Chinese efforts in that direction," he added.

Picking up speed

Meanwhile, preparations to launch Shenzhou 7 are picking up speed in China.

According to Chinese news services, the spacecraft has undergone modifications to accommodate an airlock. A spacewalking-qualified space suit has been okayed for flight. There have been extensive checkouts of the craft to fulfill its mission objectives.

What day the three-person crew takes off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on its Long March booster in October is yet to be announced. Earlier, there has been comment about broadcasting the spacewalk live on television.

Moreover, the spacewalk mission — and the duties to be performed during the EVA — has been deemed as crucial for China to make possible a space laboratory or station in Earth orbit.

Earlier this month, it was noted that six taikonauts had been selected for the upcoming mission from 14 candidates — a crowd that included Yang Liwei, China's first space explorer who flew solo on Shenzhou 5. For Shenzhou 7, three will fly the actual mission with the others tagged as substitutes.

Also, Yuanwang 6, an ocean-going tracking ship, has been delivered for service in Shanghai to participate in the Shenzhou 7 flight and to assist in the slated spacewalk. It joins sister ship, Yuanwang 5, to take part in maritime space surveying and mission controlling operations.

Qi Faren, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and researcher of China Spaceflight Technology Research Institute — credited as chief designer of China's first five Shenzhou spaceships and chief consultant for Shenzhou 6 and Shenzhou 7 - has been quoted as saying that plans are already underway for Shenzhou 8 and Shenzhou 9. He added that "the intervals between each launch will become shorter."

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Scientists said today they have "found proof" of water ice on Mars away from the polar ice caps, a discovery made by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander.

The finding is a crucial first step toward learning whether the ground on Mars is hospitable, because all life as we know it requires water. Now scientists can get on with the business of studying the chemistry of Mars dirt in more detail.

When the probe took photos of a ditch it had dug four days before, scientists noticed that about eight small crumbs of a bright material had disappeared. They concluded those crumbs had been water ice buried under a thin layer of dirt that vaporized when Phoenix exposed them to the air.

"It's with great pride and a lot of joy I announce today we have found proof that this hard material really is water ice and not some other substance," Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson said at a briefing Friday.

The finding had been discussed tentatively yesterday, but in a press conference today, researchers left no doubts.

Phoenix's robotic arm first revealed the crumbs about 5 cm deep in the trench called "Dodo-Goldilocks" on June 15. By June 19, they had vanished. If the crumbs had been salt, they wouldn't have disappeared, scientists said, and if the ice had been made of carbon dioxide, they wouldn't have vaporized.

"What this tells us is we found what we're looking for," said Mark Lemmon, a Phoenix co-investigator from Texas A&M University. "This tells us that we've got water ice within reach of the [robotic] arms, which means that we can continue the investigation."

The $420 million mission landed on the arctic plains of Mars May 25, embarking on a quest of at least four months to search for signs that the environment was once habitable to life.

A "significant result"

Finding ice on Mars isn't completely shocking, since observations from past satellites sent to orbit the planet, such as the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft, have indicated that ice is likely to lie beneath the planet's surface. Still, if confirmed, this would be the first direct finding of that ice by a probe on the ground.

 "We certainly expected to find ice there," said Bruce Jakosky, a geologist at the University of Colorado who has been involved with past missions to the red planet. "It was the [previous] evidence for ice that sent us to that location. But there's a difference between expecting it and finding."

Jakosky called the discovery a "significant result" that allows the Phoenix mission to go forward with its wet chemistry experiments, analyzing the soil for the history and composition of the ice.

"If they had found no ice, which was a real possibility, that would make this much harder," he told SPACE.com. "I'm anxious to see the results of the chemical analysis."

And although the 2001 Mars Odyssey satellite could measure the average water ice content in roughly the top meter of ground over areas of several hundred kilometers, these data didn't reveal how that ice was spread out, said Maria Zuber, a geophysicist at MIT who worked on past Mars missions, including the Spirit rover.

"We don't know the form of the water, beyond the fact that there is too much there to be explained solely by water bound in minerals," Zuber said. "So chunks, a layer, etc. are all possibilities. The [Phoenix] observation is an important advance in our understanding of water on Mars, and continued sampling will undoubtedly add to the story."

Next steps

The next questions to answer are what chemicals, minerals and organic compounds might be mixed in with the water.

"Just the fact that there's ice there doesn't tell you if it's habitable," Smith said. "With ice and no food it's not a habitable zone. We don't eat rocks — we have to have carbon chain materials that we ingest into our bodies to create new cells and give us energy. That's what we eat and that's what has to be there if you're going to have a habitable zone on Mars."

To find this out, mission scientists plan to eventually put samples of ice into Phoenix's oven instrument, the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA), which is designed to bake Martian dirt and analyze the vapors it emits to detect its composition. They also plan to use the onboard Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) instrument, a wet chemistry lab that measures levels of acidity, minerals, and conductivity in dirt samples.

"Now we know for sure that we are on an icy surface and we can really meet the science goals of our mission at the highest level," Lemmon said. "I am just sitting at the edge of my chair waiting to find out what the TEGA and MECA can tell us about these soils."

Expect the unexpected

Although the ice finding was expected, until Phoenix actually found it, many scientists were still holding their breath.

"As for the ice, we were expecting to find it, but science is full of the unexpected, so until they actually found the ice and can begin to study it there are real questions about whether or not the hypothesis was correct," said Phil Christensen, a geophysicist at Arizona State University who worked on 2001 Mars Odyssey, Mars Global Surveyor, and the Mars Exploration Rover missions. "The real excitement will come when they start to study the ice in detail and attempt to learn how it formed and how old it is."

Additional reporting for this article was contributed by Jeremy Hsu, SPACE.com staff writer.

• Video: Digging on Mars
• Video: NASA's Phoenix: Rising to the Red Planet
• New Images: Phoenix on Mars!

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This report was updated at 6:01 p.m. EDT.

HOUSTON — NASA's shuttle Discovery and its seven-astronaut crew said "sayonara" to the International Space Station (ISS) Wednesday to begin the trip home after delivering a new Japanese lab to the orbiting outpost.

Discovery undocked from the space station at 7:42 a.m. EDT (1142 GMT) after nine days of orbital construction to install and outfit Japan's billion-dollar Kibo laboratory.

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander successfully scooped up a sample of Martian soil with its robotic arm, mission scientists said on Friday.

The scoop is poised and ready to deliver the sample to an instrument on the spacecraft that will analyze the soil.

"This is really an important occasion for us, to be poised to make a measurement for the first time of the Martian arctic soil," said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona.

The $420 million mission aims to dig down through the soil to the layers of water ice thought to lie underneath the surface, and to analyze soil samples to determine their composition and see if the ice might once have been liquid water, potentially creating a habitable zone for microbial life at some point in the past.

Phoenix retrieved its sample Thursday from a site dubbed Baby Bear, which lies just to the right of the trench the lander dug out in its practice digs. The practice digging locale is called Dodo.  After scooping up the sample, measuring about 1 cup in volume, Phoenix used its robotic arm camera to photograph the sample so that scientists could make sure they had enough to deliver to the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) instrument aboard the lander.

"This looks like a really good sample for us," Smith said.

Mission controllers will send instructions to the lander to dump the sample into one of the TEGA ovens tonight. The TEGA ovens, which are about an inch long and the diameter of a pencil lead, will heat up the soil samples and use a mass spectrometer to detect the gases that come off the samples, which will shed light on some of the materials in the soil, specifically those formed by the process of liquid water.

"The TEGA system is particularly sensitive to water in its oven ... water is the first thing that's cooked out," Smith said.

Mission scientists must be careful when delivering the sample not to overload the instrument and contaminate other ovens. Once the sample is delivered on Friday, Phoenix will image TEGA to make sure the sample has been delivered and that the oven door is shut. The instrument is will then begin its four-day analysis (which may not occur in four consecutive days); the team will report each day's results as they become available. Any water present in the sample should be the first thing to vaporize from the soil, Smith said.

The sample also contains some of the white material seen in the scoop after Phoenix's first practice "dig and dump," which scientists think could be ice or a type of salt mineral.

Of course, they can't be sure that any of the white material will make it through the oven's entry screen. "We're hoping that some of this goes in and that we get a hint of what it is," Smith said.

Some science team members think that the whitish material can't be ice because it has been too easy to scrape up — the ice layers under the soil will likely be difficult to scrap because ice is so hard at the brutally frigid temperatures on Mars (which have so far reached a high of only -22 degrees Fahrenheit (-30 Celsius) since Phoenix landed).

"Some people think that it's too easy to get this material and that it can't be ice," Smith said. But he added that if the white material turns out to be some kind of salt, "that would be a very nice discovery" because salts are what is left when water reacts with soil.

After TEGA begins its analysis, the lander will start digging up samples for its microscopes and its wet chemistry lab. The microscope samples will likely be taken from the same Baby Bear site as the TEGA samples, because they will she further light on TEGA's results. The wet chemistry samples will be taken from an adjacent site just to the right of Baby Bear, dubbed Mama Bear.

"If we have a really good week [next week], we could have each of those delivered by the end of the week," Smith said.

• Video: Sounds From Phoenix Mars Lander's Descent
• Video: NASA's Phoenix: Rising to the Red Planet
• New Images: Phoenix on Mars!