A Long March 7 rocket arrived at Wenchang spaceport Monday in preparation for a new round of space station missions starting May.
The Long March 7 rocket was delivered to Wenchang after a near week-long voyage from the northern port city of Tianjin, China’s human spaceflight agency
announced April 11.
The rocket is planned to launch the roughly 13.5-metric-ton Tianzhou-4 cargo vessel next month to China’s Tianhe space station core module.
Tianzhou-4 will deliver supplies and propellant for the Shenzhou-14 crewed mission, expected to launch from Jiuquan spaceport in the Gobi Desert in June.
The three-person Shenzhou-14 crew will be aboard the Tianhe space module for the arrival of two new modules, named Wentian and Mengtian, which will
complete the three-module, T-shaped Chinese space station, later in the year.
China
deorbited the Tianzhou-2 spacecraft late last month after using the cargo vessel for space station module transposition tests, making way for the new mission.
The subsequent launch of the Tianzhou-5 and Shenzhou-15 late in 2022 will see a first crew handover, with six astronauts aboard the Tiangong space station, and completion of the project’s 11-mission construction phase.