The successful launch of China's first-ever docking mission Monday could stir speculation that China is bent on becoming a space superpower. The Shenzhou 8 spacecraft aims to test technologies that China will use to build a space station by 2020.

The unmanned spacecraft blasted off atop a Long March 2F rocket at 5:58 p.m. EDT from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Inner Mongolia, and is expected to rendevouz with the Tiangong 1 space module, which was launched last month.

The launch came as a U.S. commission claimed that China may have been responsible for hacking U.S. environment-monitoring satellites. The satellites were interfered with four or more times in 2007 and 2008 via a ground station in Norway, and China's military is a prime suspect, according to the draft report to Congress.

China has denied the charge, saying the committee had "ulterior motives" in writing such a draft report.

Observers, on the other hand, find that the timing of the Chinese space station, which is expected to start operating when the 17-nation International Space Station is decommissioned, as a proof that indeed China intends to dominate space in the 21st century.

"The mastering of rendezvous and docking technologies will lay a key technical foundation for China's building of space station and deep-space exploration," said Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China's manned space program.

"It will make it possible for China to carry out space exploration on a larger scale," he added.

Indeed, China seems to be planning for bigger things ahead. Shenzhou 8's main mission is locating and latching onto its orbiting partner, but the newly launched spacecraft also has some subsidiary goals.

Shenzhou 8 is carrying a joint Chinese-German payload that will test the effects of microgravity on various biological specimens, including plants, nematode worms, bacteria and human cancer cells, marking the first time China has ever collaborated with another country on one of its Shenzhou missions.

China plans to have a manned space station up and running by 2020 and to achieve this it has to launch two more Shenzhou docking missions to Tiangong 1 before the end of 2012. It is the third country, after Russia and the United States, to develop spacecraft capable of flying humans to and from space.