Tianzhou 5 () was the fifth mission of the Tianzhou-class uncrewed cargo

spacecraft A spacecraft is a vehicle that is designed spaceflight, to fly and operate in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including Telecommunications, communications, Earth observation satellite, Earth observation, Weather s ...

, and the fourth resupply mission to the

Tiangong Space Station Tiangong (), officially the ''Tiangong'' space station (), is a permanently crewed space station constructed by China and operated by China Manned Space Agency. Tiangong is a modular design, with modules docked together while in low Earth o ...

. Like previous Tianzhou missions, the spacecraft was launched from the

Wenchang Satellite Launch Center The Wenchang Space Launch Site ( zh, 文昌航天发射场, links=no) is a rocket launch site located in Wenchang on the island of Hainan, in China. Formally a suborbital test center, it currently serves as China's southernmost spaceport. ...

Hainan Hainan is an island provinces of China, province and the southernmost province of China. It consists of the eponymous Hainan Island and various smaller islands in the South China Sea under the province's administration. The name literally mean ...

, China on a

Long March 7 The Long March 7 (), or Chang Zheng 7 in pinyin, abbreviated LM-7 for export or CZ-7 within China, originally Long March 2F/H or Chang Zheng 2F/H, nicknamed Bingjian (), is a Chinese liquid-fuelled launch vehicle of the Long March family, dev ...

rocket. It was successfully placed into orbit on 12 November and docked to the Tiangong space station on the same day. The rendezvous and docking process lasted 2 hours and 7 minutes, setting a world record for the fastest rendezvous and docking between a spacecraft and a space station, surpassing

Soyuz MS-17 Soyuz MS-17 was a Soyuz spaceflight that was launched on 14 October 2020. It transported three crew members of the Expedition 63/ 64 crew to the International Space Station. Soyuz MS-17 was the 145th crewed flight of a Soyuz spacecraft. The cr ...

's 3 hours and 3 minutes.

Spacecraft

The Tianzhou

cargo spacecraft Uncrewed spacecraft or robotic spacecraft are spacecraft without people on board. Uncrewed spacecraft may have varying levels of autonomy from human input, such as remote control, or remote guidance. They may also be autonomous, in which the ...

has several notable differences with the

Tiangong-1 Tiangong-1 () was China's first prototype space station. It orbited Earth from September 2011 to April 2018, serving as both a crewed laboratory and an experimental testbed to demonstrate orbital rendezvous and docking capabilities during it ...

from which it is derived. It has only three segments of

solar panels A solar panel is a device that converts sunlight into electricity by using photovoltaic (PV) cells. PV cells are made of materials that produce excited electrons when exposed to light. These electrons flow through a circuit and produce direct ...

(against 4 for Tiangong), but has 4 maneuvering engines (against 2 for Tiangong).

Notes

References

{{Portal bar, China, Spaceflight Tiangong program Tianzhou (spacecraft) 2022 in China Spacecraft launched in 2022