China’s Shenzhou 14 astronauts have opened up and entered the Tianzhou 5 cargo spacecraft after its docking on the nation’s newly accomplished space station.
Tianzhou 5 launched on Saturday (Nov. 12) atop a Lengthy March 7 rocket and arrived on the Tiangong space station simply over two hours later, setting a brand new report for shortest rendezvous and docking time. Earlier Tianzhou freighters took about 6.5 hours from launch till docking.
Shenzhou 14 commander Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe opened the hatch door of Tianzhou 5 on Sunday (Nov. 13) at 0618 GMT (2:18 p.m. Beijing time), according to Chinese officials (opens in new tab), and started taking inventory of the brand new deliveries.
Associated: The latest news about China’s space program
The cargo craft hauled round 11,000 kilos (5,000 kilograms) of products and supplies for the three crew members of the upcoming, six-month-long Shenzhou 15 mission, and three,080 kilos (1,400 kg) of propellant to assist the space station keep its orbit.
“Tianzhou 5 is supplied with eight storage tanks, whereas the Tianzhou 3 and 4 solely have 4 every. This time, it carries 5 units of payload tools for 3 space experiments. Two cell experiment items are brand-new,” Zhang Zhenhua, deputy chief designer of the cargo spacecraft system on the China Academy of Area Know-how, told CCTV+ (opens in new tab).
The 35-foot-long (10.6 meters) freighter additionally carried 5 cubesats that may very well be launched later through the use of a payload airlock and launch mechanism on Mengtian, the third and closing space station module, which launched and joined Tiangong on the finish of October.
The T-shaped Tiangong presently consists of the Tianhe core module and the Wentian and Mengtian experiment modules. Tianzhou 5 and the Shenzhou 14 crew spacecraft are additionally docked with Tiangong. Shenzhou 15 may launch for the space station as quickly as the top of November.
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