A The spacecraft, which carries supplies for future astronauts, performed an automatic docking with the station, which is composed of the Tianhe core module and the Mengtian and Wentian laboratory modules.
Tianzhou-6, the ninth spacecraft to visit the Chinese station and the first to do so since it was completed in late 2022, successfully arrived at the structure, known as Tiangong, at 05:16 local time (22:16 in Lisbon).
The spacecraft took off from the Wenchang space launch center on Hainan island, in the extreme south of China, aboard the Long March 7-Y7 rocket.
The module carries around 260 packages with a total weight of almost 5.8 tonnes, including food, water, scientific equipment and fuel for the station.
Among the foodstuffs are about 70 kilos of fruit, double the load carried by the previous Tianzhou-5 mission.
The vessel has an improved payload capacity of up to 7.4 tonnes and a service life of over one year, and also has more space in pressurized containers, thanks to a redesigned interior.
Tianzhou-6 will remain docked at the station for several months and perform various fuel transfer operations.
Tiangong will receive two manned missions this year: Shenzhou-16, which will carry three astronauts in the coming weeks, and Shenzhou-17, which will carry another three astronauts in October.
The Chinese space station, whose name means “Celestial Palace” in Chinese, weighs about 70 tonnes and is expected to operate for 15 years, orbiting about 400 kilometers above the Earth’s surface.
By 2024, it is likely to become the world’s only space station if the International Space Station, a US-led initiative from which China has been excluded, is withdrawn that year, as planned.
In recent years, the Chinese space program has achieved several successes, such as landing the Chang’e 4 probe on the far side of the Moon – an unprecedented feat – and putting a probe on Mars, becoming the third country – after the United States and former Soviet Union – to do so.
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