Tianzhou 5 () is the fifth mission of the Tianzhou-class unmanned cargo

spacecraft A spacecraft is a vehicle or machine designed to fly in outer space. A type of artificial satellite, spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, Earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, p ...

, and the fourth resupply mission to the Tiangong Space Station. 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), located in Wenchang, Hainan, China, is a rocket launch site — one of the two spacecraft launch sites of Xichang Satellite Launch Center (the other site is in Xichang, ...

Hainan Hainan (, ; ) is the smallest and southernmost province of the People's Republic of China (PRC), consisting of various islands in the South China Sea. , the largest and most populous island in China,The island of Taiwan, which is slightly l ...

, China on a

Long March 7 , stages = {{plainlist, * CZ-7: Two * CZ-7A: Three {{cite web, url=https://www.space.com/china-space-program-new-long-march-rockets.html, last=Jones, first=Andrew, title=China prepares to launch new rockets as part of push to boost spac ...

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 cre ...

's 3 hours and 3 minutes.

Spacecraft

The Tianzhou

cargo spacecraft Cargo spacecraft are robotic spacecraft that are designed to carry cargo, possibly to support space stations' operation by transporting food, propellant and other supplies. This is different from a space probes, space probe, whose missions are to ...

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 cell panel, solar electric panel, photo-voltaic (PV) module, PV panel or solar panel is an assembly of photovoltaic solar cells mounted in a (usually rectangular) frame, and a neatly organised collection of PV panels is called a phot ...

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

References

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