According to the China Manned Space Agency, the spacecraft was launched aboard the Long March-7 Y8 carrier rocket and took three hours to rendezvous at the international station.
Previous Tianzhou missions regularly took about 6.5 hours in rendezvous and docking.
Tianzhou-7 carried more than 260 supplies, including Tiangong systems and engineering items. The total weight was about 5.6 tons.
Tianzhou-7 has a new mode of rendezvous and docking, which is expected to give better play to the spacecraft’s guidance, navigation, and control systems, researcher Li Zhiyong said.
According to the plan, China will launch the Tianzhou-8 cargo aircraft from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in southern Hainan province this year.
jg/iff/jf/idm
