July 25, 2022

The Wentian module blasting off atop a Long March-5B Y3 rocket (Photo courtesy Xinhua/Yang Guanyu)

A confirmation has arrived that the Wentian module has successfully completed its docking maneuvers with the Chinese Tiangong space station’s Tianhe core module. Wentian was launched about 13 hours earlier from the Wenchang base atop a Long March-5B Y3 rocket. A few hours after docking, the taikonauts, as the Chinese call their astronauts, of the Shenzhou-14 mission entered the new module. This is another crucial step in the construction of the Chinese space station.