By Leroy Chiao, Special to CNN

updated 8:47 AM EDT, Fri June 29, 2012

A view from Shenzhou-9 spacecraft as it prepares to link with the Tiangong-1 module.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Editor's note: Leroy Chiao is a former NASA astronaut and commander of the International Space Station. He served as a member of the 2009 Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee, and is the special adviser for human spaceflight to the Space Foundation.

(CNN) -- In May, SpaceX became the first of the new generation of commercial aerospace companies to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. The cargo delivery was part of the first flight test of the integrated Falcon-9 launch vehicle and the Dragon capsule spacecraft with rendezvous and berthing mechanism systems.

By all accounts, the major test objectives were successfully achieved. Previously, such spacecraft and operations had only been achieved by governments. What made this a historic first was that a commercial company had done it. The news was widely covered in the international media, especially in the United States.

One month later, China launched its fourth crewed space mission, Shenzhou-9. This was also a history-making flight, in that China, which had in 2003 become only the third nation capable of launching astronauts into space (and is now only one of two, since the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle in 2011), demonstrated crewed rendezvous and docking to their orbital module, Tiangong-1. The crew also featured China's first female astronaut. They spent several days docked to Tiangong-1 conducting various operations, before safely returning to Earth on Thursday night.

Leroy Chiao

China's mission was widely covered in the international media, but the coverage in the United States was notably quieter than that of SpaceX. This is somewhat understandable, as SpaceX is an American company. But the sentiment of many in the United States is that the Chinese mission was a big "So what?" After all, the United States and Soviet governments had demonstrated crewed docking missions back in the 1960s, and operationally, China is still far behind.

Read the original:

China's giant, quiet step in space