China’s Shenzhou-15 manned spaceship docks with space station

China’s Shenzhou-15 spaceship with three astronauts on board successfully docked with the country’s space station on Wednesday, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).

The spaceship, launched atop a Long March-2F Y15 carrier rocket on Tuesday night, conducted a fast automated rendezvous and docked with the front port of the space station’s Tianhe module at 05:42 Wednesday (Beijing Time), said the CMSA.

The whole process took approximately 6.5 hours, the CMSA said.

Afterwards, the Shenzhou-15 crew entered the Tianhe module and the astronaut trio of the Shenzhou-14 welcomed them upon their arrival.

It is the first time that Chinese astronauts aboard the space station have seen the visit of a crewed spaceship, according to the CMSA.

The two teams will work together for about a week before the Shenzhou-14 crew head back to Earth.

The three Shenzhou-15 crew members are Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu. They will stay at the space station for six months.

The Shenzhou-15 mission is the last step for the construction phase of the China Space Station (CSS), marking the first crew handover in the newly completed three-module space station.

With the arrival of the Shenzhou-15 spaceship, the CSS has expanded to its largest configuration of three modules and three spaceships, with a total mass of nearly 100 tons.