It is a joyous moment for China. They have successfully launched their first unmanned cargo spacecraft on Thursday. It is a crucial step towards its goal to have a permanently manned space station by 2022.
The Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft plunked into the sky from the Wenchang Space Launch Centre in the southern Hainan Province. This whole mission is powered by a Long March-7 Y2 carrier rocket.
In space, the cargo spacecraft will dock with the country's space station Tiangong-2, provide fuel and other goods. It will conduct scientific experiment before falling back to Earth, reported by Aljazeera.
This mission was declared a success by the ground control engineers of Beijing when they found the spacecraft cleared the air and stayed at a high altitude. According to researchers, this spacecraft can fly with six tons of goods, two tons of fuel and can fly unmanned for three months.
Additionally, the Tianzhou-1 cargo ship has a length of 10.6meter and a diameter of 3.35meter. It is much larger and heavier than Tiangong-2, which is weighing 8.6 tons, reported by The Hindu.
China has already launched Tiangong-2 pioneer whereas the 20-tons core module is schedule for the next year. The whole station is about 60-tons and it is expected to be into full service since 2022. It is expected that the station will run at least for a decade.
Any kind of Communication cannot be established with Tiangong-1 right now. It is assumed that the Tiangong-1 is burnt and destroyed. China's Space Program abandoned such cooperation and concerned about the powerful military connection with U.S., due to this reason China was excluded from 420-tons International Space Station.
Since 2003, China conducted its first crewed space mission. Now, another rover on Mars mission is scheduled to launch in 2020. Chinese officials are now offering help to fund the mission of other countries from Tiangong-2. However, Chine's president Xi Jinping says, he is feeling proud now and he is advancing China's space program to strengthen national security.
