China’s cargo spacecraft docks with house station module

The Tianzhou-2, or “Heavenly Vessel” in Chinese, autonomously rendezvoused and docked with Tianhe at 5:01 a.m. Beijing time, Xinhua said Sunday.

It blasted off via a Long March-7 Y3 rocket at 8:55 p.m. Beijing time on Saturday from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on the southern island of Hainan, the China Manned Space Engineering Office said.

With a designed life of more than 1 year, Tianzhou-2 carried supplies for future astronauts including food for the crew of the Shenzhou-12, which will be launched next month for a three-month stay on the station, as well as two tons of propellant.

Tianzhou-2 is the second in a series of missions needed to complete China’s first self-developed space station in 2022, and follows the launch of Tianhe, the first module, in late April.

The three-module space station will rival the International Space Station (ISS), which is backed by countries including the United States, Russia and Japan. China was barred from participating in the ISS by the United…

The post China’s cargo spacecraft docks with house station module appeared first on CaymanMama.com | News.

from CaymanMama.com | News https://ift.tt/34xC66B