Shenzhou-5 mission sets new record for fastest rendezvous, docking operation

The Shenzhou-14 crew entered the Tianzhou-5 cargo spacecraft on Sunday at 3:03 pm, after they completed environment testing of the newly launched and docked spacecraft, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said. The taikonauts will transfer the cargo according to schedule, the Global Times learned from the CMSA on Sunday afternoon.

China set a new world record for the fastest rendezvous and docking operations between two spacecraft with its Tianzhou-5 cargo supply mission to the country’s Tiangong Space Station on Saturday. It was a great achievement marking that China has mastered autonomous orbit determination capability with even higher precision and improved adaptability, and signaling that the country’s space rendezvous and docking technology has increasingly matured, mission insiders said on Sunday.

The China Academy of Spacecraft Technology (CAST), the developer of the Tianzhou-5 cargo spacecraft, said that the much-shortened groundto-space transportation capability would enable shipments of live experimental projects to the space station, while it also has the potential of being applied in a space rescue situation.

It is a sign of an overall advance of the country’s spacecraft’s autonomous orbit determination capability with higher precision and optimized flight control measures. It would also lay the ground for more diverse rendezvous and docking modes in the future with a wider range of functions, it noted.

The Tianzhou-5 cargo spacecraft was launched via a Long March-7 carrier rocket from Wenchang Space Launch Site, South China’s Hainan Province, on Saturday 10 am and it reached China Space Station in two hours at midday on Saturday, the CMSA said. With the fast rendezvous, the Tianzhou-5 cargo spacecraft broke the record held by Russia’s manned spacecraft Soyuz MS-17.