HELSINKI — A cargo spacecraft has arrived at China’s Tiangong space station, delivering supplies, experiments and equipment to support crewed missions.
The Tianzhou-8 spacecraft launched atop a Long March 7 rocket from the coastal Wenchang spaceport at 10:13 a.m. Eastern (1513 UTC) Nov. 15. The spacecraft separated from the rocket around 10 minutes into the flight.
Tianzhou-8 docked with Tiangong just over three hours later, at 1:32 p.m. Eastern (1832 UTC). The spacecraft docked with the space station’s aft port , according to the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO).
The spacecraft is carrying around 6,000 kilograms of supplies, according to China Central Television. Most of this is dedicated to supporting the ongoing Shenzhou-19 crewed mission, which launched Oct. 29, and the future Shenzhou-20 crew.
The payload mass includes 458 kilograms of scientific application materials, including experiment payloads, units and samples, as well as spare parts and application consumables.
One of the experiments aboard Tianzhou-8 is a set of bricks made from varying compositions of lunar regolith simulant. The bricks will be deployed on external racks outside Tiangong and exposed to the harsh vacuum and radiation and temperature environments of outer space for around three years. These will then be returned to Earth for analysis and could inform how China plans to construct habitats for its planned International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) in the 2030s.
Beyond materials for lunar research, Tianzhou-8 also supports biological studies related to long-term space exploration. These will be…
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