China has verified that its maiden cargo flight arrived with the country's new space station safely.
According to Chinese media accounts, the uncrewed Tianzhou-2 spacecraft, transporting supplies and fuel, arrived at the main Tianhe module roughly 230 miles above Earth on Sunday, May 30.
Reuters said a Long March-7 Y3 rocket carrying Tianzhou-2 launched from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan Province, about 1,500 miles southwest of Beijing on Saturday, May 29.
As part of the Shenzhou-12 mission, the successful docking lays the door for the first Chinese astronauts to visit the station. According to the China National Space Administration, the three crew members will launch in the following weeks.
China to Send Three Astronauts to Space Station
A space official who was the country's first astronaut in orbit said that a three-person crew of astronauts would launch in June for a three-month mission on China's new space station.
Yang Liwei, the crewed space program's deputy chief designer, confirmed China launched the plans for the station's first crew to state television as an automated spacecraft carrying fuel and supplies for the Tianhe station.
China's highly ambitious space program has launched the Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony, its third and largest space station. The country launched the core module of the spacecraft into orbit on April 29.
In comments on China Central Television obtained by Washington Post report on Saturday, Yang said that China will launch the Shenzhou 12 capsule containing the crew from the Jiuquan station in China's northwest next month.
They'll go on spacewalks, perform repairs and maintenance, and conduct scientific experiments.
Yang, who orbited the Earth in 2003, did not reveal the astronauts' identities or a flight date but did say the crew would be from the program's two initial batches of astronauts.
China's Space Ambitions
China's space ambitions have risen in recent years, with challenging missions to the moon and Mars attracting international interest.
China has no participation in the International Space Station, which motivated it to launch two prototype space stations in the last decade - Tiangong 1 and Tiangong 2 - to create its orbiting base in space. Both have since been deactivated, but the lessons acquired from them have led to the development of the Tiangong Space Station, China's newest habitable satellite.
Although the station can currently accommodate humans, China still needs about ten more rocket launches to finish the new facility, which it intends to complete in 2022. Two of the missions will use China's largest and most powerful launch vehicle, the Long March-5B, to deliver two more core modules to the station.
The rocket is so big that a portion of it didn't burn up when it re-entered Earth's atmosphere after deploying the first segment of the space station in April.
China was chastised for not including technologies in the rocket that would have allowed for a controlled, directed re-entry. In the end, a piece of the spent Long March-5B rocket landed safely in the Indian Ocean near the Maldives, as Science Times reported.
China's new space station is anticipated to survive at least ten years, outlasting the 20-year-old International Space Station, which could be decommissioned by the end of this decade.
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