Tianzhou-10 Cargo Spacecraft Rolls out Ahead of Tiangong Resupply
A delivery of 6,300 kilograms of consumables, experiments, and propellant will head to the space station in a few days after appearing at Wenchang for launch.
On the morning of May 8th, a Long March 7 launch vehicle appeared from its vehicle assembly building at the Wenchang Space Launch Site atop of its launch platform, heading for Launch Complex 201 with the Tianzhou-10 cargo spacecraft inside its fairing.
The trip to Launch Complex 201 took a few hours from emergence to securing the platform the launch vehicle is atop of. Ahead of launch, the Long March 7 and Tianzhou-10 will undergo final joint tests to confirm that there are no issues preventing them from flying into low Earth orbit in the coming days to chase down the Tiangong Space Station.
Based on current notices, the launch of the Long March 7 with Tianzhou-10 appears to be set after 08:00 am China Standard Time (00:00 am Universal Coordinated Time) on May 11th for a sunrise liftoff and ascent into orbit. A launch attempt on that day will have a several-second launch window, thanks to launch vehicle improvements, while Tiangong passes over Wenchang.
Following launch, the spacecraft will spend a brief period chasing down the Tiangong Space Station for a docking at its aft port, exclusively for Tianzhou missions, with the Shenzhou-21 taikonauts Zhang Lu (张陆), Wu Fei (武飞), and Zhang Hongzhang (张洪章) overseeing arrival and opening the hatches a few hours afterwards.
Cargo being delivered by Tianzhou-10 will include crew consumables like food, water, and clothing to support the end of the current taikonauts’ one-month mission extension as well as the stay of the upcoming Shenzhou-23 trio1, alongside some new experiments for crews to support and perform are likely to be onboard too, together masing 6,300 kilograms. 280 kilograms of which are new experiments for fluid physics and new space technologies, among others. Propellants for Tiangong’s attitude control system, as well as its electric-based orbit maintenance engines, are also being delivered for direct refueling2, weighing about 700 kilograms.
As part of an effort to replace the Feitian (飞天航天服) spacesuits onboard the station3, identifiable by red, blue, or yellow bands and decor, Tianzhou-10 is also set to deliver the third such suit, with upgrades to its systems and design. The two other suits were previously delivered by Tianzhou-9, then first used in December 2025 and so far have accumulated three uses by mid-April. Bands and decor on the new suits are the same as the old, with red and blue already in space.
Since the Tianzhou-8 mission in November 2024, Tianzhou cargo spacecraft visit Tiangong about every eight months for three times within a twenty-four-month period, and remain docked until days before a new spacecraft is launched. That mission frequency is said to maximize cargo delivery and storage space for the orbiting laboratory, as well as reducing costs.
To prepare for the arrival of Tianzhou-10, Tianzhou-9 was undocked from Tiangong at 16:34 pm China Standard Time (08:34 am Universal Coordinated Time) on May 6th, from Tianhe’s aft docking port. That cargo spacecraft, launched in July 2025 to deliver new spacesuits alongside the usual items, departed with waste items and unusable materials that cannot be returned to Earth with present cargo-carrying capabilities4.
Almost a day later, at 07:49 am China Standard Time on May 7th (23:49 pm Universal Coordinated time on May 6th), Tianzhou reentered Earth’s atmosphere for disposal following a deorbit burn. The deorbit likely had the spacecraft target the south Pacific’s remote spacecraft cemetery, with small parts of the cargo spacecraft falling to the ocean’s surface5.
The Shenzhou-21 crew has the Shenzhou-22 spacecraft, which launched without crew, following a space debris strike to the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft, with the Shenzhou-20 crew taking the Shenzhou-21 spacecraft home. Tiangong’s next crew will be part of the Shenzhou-23 missions, with the only notable change being the mission number.
This has been a capability of every Tianzhou spacecraft, and was demonstrated with the single-module Tiangong-2 space station in 2017.
This includes returning the old suits to Earth for study. So far only one has been returned, via the uncrewed descent of Shenzhou-20. The Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute’s (成都飞机设计研究所) Haolong (昊龙) cargo spaceplane is expected to return the other two.
At present, cargo can only be returned to Earth from Tiangong via the Shenzhou spacecraft, which will almost always fly with three taikonauts onboard.
Parts of engines and thrusters which are designed to operate at high temperatures to properly burn propellants.