Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Artist concept of the Tianzhou-1 cargo resupply spacecraft.
Credit: CMSE

China’s resupply spacecraft – the Tianzhou series – will open its cargo hatches in the future and carry investigations by government organizations, research institutions, educational institutions, enterprises and industry groups.

The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced that post-completion of the country’s space station — headed for the end of 2022 — two Tianzhou spacecraft are to be launched on average each year.

CMSA explained that any project group pushing the sci-tech frontier, meets the requirement of national development strategy and sci-tech development trend, or is forward-looking, innovative or has industrial development value can submit an application on or before January 15, 2022.

Rollout of Long March-7 Y4 and the Tianzhou-3 cargo spacecraft.
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab

Application experiments

This is the first time for China’s manned space mission to open its cargo craft payloads to the public, said the CMSA.

Earlier, the CMSA cooperated with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs on the application of China’s space station to provide opportunities to carry out application experiments. There have been nine projects from 17 countries selected, which are in the fields of space life science and biotechnology, space astronomy, and microgravity fluids and combustion.

China’s space station is projected to be completed in late 2022.
Credit: CAST

Tianzhou-3 and Tianzhou-2 were launched on September 20 and May 29 respectively this year. Each transported supplies and materials for the construction of China’s orbiting outpost.