Astronauts transferring cargo into space station

The Shenzhou XIV crew on board the Tiangong space station entered the Tianzhou 5 cargo spaceship on Sunday afternoon and has begun to arrange and move supplies and equipment to the station, according to the China Manned Space Agency.

The agency said in a news release that the astronauts — mission commander Senior Colonel Chen Dong, Senior Colonel Liu Yang and Senior Colonel Cai Xuzhe — opened the Tianzhou 5 docking hatch and floated into the robotic craft. They will carry out tasks like transferring cargo to the station, it added.

Mission planners said the cargo ship is carrying about 5.3 metric tons of materials including living and mission necessities, scientific equipment and a mini experimental satellite. The craft also contains nearly 1.4 tons of propellant for the Tiangong station.

Tianzhou 5 was placed into a low-Earth orbit by a Long March 7 carrier rocket that blasted off on Saturday morning from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province.

After the cargo craft entered the orbit, it traveled two hours and seven minutes to rendezvous with the massive Tiangong space station and docked with it at 12:10 pm.

These were the fastest rendezvous and docking maneuvers ever conducted by spacecraft, replacing the record created by Russian spacecraft Soyuz MS-17 on Oct 14,2020, which took three hours and three minutes after liftoff to rendezvous and connect with the International Space Station.

The fast rendezvous and docking are key to establishing the ability to transport supplies to the space station in an emergency, the manned space agency said.

Bai Mingsheng, chief designer of the Tianzhou family at the China Academy of Space Technology in Beijing, said that to achieve the fast rendezvous and docking, engineers optimized the guidance procedures and orbital maneuvers to shorten the time it took Tianzhou 5 to approach and link with the station.

"The fast-docking ability represents our advances in spacecraft's orbital and position control, guidance, and flight control technologies. It allows us to send fresh supplies and equipment to astronauts and improves our ability to carry out an emergency rescue," he said.

Tianzhou 5 is the fourth cargo ship to have docked with Tiangong, following Tianzhou 2, 3 and 4.

Tianzhou 4, which connected with the space station for six months, undocked from it on Wednesday and will be guided by ground controllers back to Earth in due course, the agency said last week.

According to Bai, starting with Tianzhou 6, new cargo ships will have an improved airtight cabin that can carry more supplies to astronauts.

The Tiangong station currently consists of a core module, two lab modules, a spacecraft used to transport the astronauts as well as the newly arrived cargo ship.

Three crews have lived and worked inside Tiangong, one of the world's largest space-based infrastructures. The Shenzhou XIV crew entered the outpost in June.

The Shenzhou XV crew is scheduled to launch and replace them in the coming weeks.

Saturday's launch marked the 449th flight of the Long March rocket family and the country's 50th space mission this year. More than 60 rocket launches are scheduled for this year.