China has launched its first domestically engineered cargo spacecraft, a crucial step in Beijing’s goal to launch and resupply a manned space station by 2022.
The mission of the Tianzhou-1, China’s biggest and heaviest spaceship to date, is to dock with the Tiangong II space lab, launched in September 2016, and conduct in-orbit refuelling — a big technical challenge.
Sustaining a manned space station would be the crowning achievement of China’s ambitious space programme, whose budget, though dwarfed by that of the US, is set to triple by 2026.
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