Shenzhou crew dock with Tiangong station

Three Chinese astronauts docked early yesterday with their country’s space station, where they will overlap for several days with the three-member crew already onboard and expand the facility to its maximum size. Docking with the Tiangong station came at 5.42am yesterday, about 61⁄2 hours after the Shenzhou-15 spaceship blasted off atop a Long March-2f carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre on Tuesday night. The six-month mission, commanded by Fei Junlong and crewed by Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu, will be the last in the station’s construction phase, according to the China Manned Space Agency.