Tianzhou 9 robotic cargo mission launched in Hainan

The Tianzhou 9 robotic cargo ship was launched on Tuesday morning in Hainan province, marking the first and only cargo mission to visit China's Tiangong space station this year.

With the cargo vessel attached above it, the Long March 7 carrier rocket lifted off at 5:34 am from a launch service tower at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan's southeastern coast, according to the China Manned Space Agency.

Following a short flight, the rocket placed the Tianzhou 7 into its preset low-Earth orbit and the robotic vessel's solar wings soon unfolded, marking the successful completion of the launch mission, the agency said in a news release. About three hours later, the spacecraft docked with the space station's Tianhe core module.

As the 17th spaceship, and the eighth cargo craft, connected with Tiangong, Tianzhou 9 is tasked with delivering propellants, science payloads and necessities for the Shenzhou XX astronauts, who have stayed in orbit for nearly three months, with their successors on the Shenzhou XXI flight scheduled to launch this winter.

Designed and built by the China Academy of Space Technology in Beijing, Tianzhou 9, like its predecessors in the Tianzhou series, boasts the biggest carrying capacity and the highest transport efficiency of its kind in the world, according to mission planners.

The vessel is carrying hundreds of packages with a combined weight of nearly 6.5 metric tons, including several science and technology apparatus and two new spacewalk suits.

Orbiting Earth at about 400 kilometers above the ground, Tiangong is now the only space station in orbit that is independently operated by a single nation. The colossal outpost has three permanent parts — a core module and two science capsules — and is regularly connected to several visiting crew and cargo spaceships.