BEIJING, June 19 (Xinhua) — China’s Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft completed its second docking with Tiangong-2 space lab at 2:55 p.m. Monday, after flying around the space lab.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tianzhou-1 separated from Tiangong-2 on Monday morning and remained at distance of five kilometers behind the space lab for about 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
Then, it was commanded to fly around Tiangong-2 from behind to a distance of five kilometers in front of the space lab. During the flight, both Tianzhou-1 and Tiangong-2 turned in a semicircle.<\/p>\n
The experiments tested docking technology at different directions, which is of great importance to building a space station, according to the China Manned Space Engineering Office.<\/p>\n
Tianzhou-1, China’s first cargo spacecraft, was launched on April 20 from south China’s Hainan Province, and it completed automated docking with the orbiting Tiangong-2 space lab on April 22.<\/p>\n
The two spacecraft completed their first in-orbit refueling on April 27 and their second in-orbit refueling on June 15.<\/p>\n
China is the third country, after Russia and the United States, to master refueling techniques in space, which is crucial in the building of a permanent space station.<\/p>\n
As the International Space Station is set to retire in 2024, the Chinese space station will offer a promising alternative, and China will be the only country with a permanent space station.<\/p>\n
<\/font><\/p>\n <\/font><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BEIJING, June 19 (Xinhua) — China’s Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft completed its second docking with Tiangong-2 space lab at 2:55 p.m. Monday, after flying around the space lab. Tianzhou-1 separated from Tiangong-2 on Monday morning and remained at distance of five kilometers behind the space lab for about 90 minutes. Then, it was commanded to fly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4483"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}