China's Tianzhou 10 freighter delivers 7 tons of cargo to Tiangong space station

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A freighter carrying nearly seven tons of supplies has made its way to China's Tiangong space station.

The robotic Tianzhou 10 cargo ship lifted off atop a Long March 7 rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Site, on China's Hainan Island, on Sunday (May 10) at 8:14 p.m. EDT (0014 GMT and 8:14 a.m. local time on May 11).

Five hours later, Tianzhou 10 docked with Tiangong ("Heavenly Palace"), the T-shaped, three-module space station that China finished assembling in low Earth orbit in late 2022.

The freighter delivered more than 220 items that have a total weight of about 6.9 tons (6.3 metric tons), according to the state-run Chinese broadcaster CCTV.

The cargo haul includes about 620 pounds (280 kilograms) of scientific experiments in fluid physics and other fields, 1,540 pounds (700 kg) of propellant and the last of three new spacewalking spacesuits.

The first two of those suits were delivered on the Tianzhou 9 cargo flight, which lifted off last July and departed Tiangong on Wednesday (May 6) to make room for Tianzhou 10.

As its name suggests, Tianzhou 10 is the 10th Tianzhou spacecraft to take flight. These freighters, whose name translates to "Celestial Vessel," are disposable, burning up in Earth's atmosphere when their time in orbit is up.

Tianzhou missions actually predate the Tiangong space station. The first such cargo ship launched in April 2017, linking up in orbit with a prototype space lab called Tiangong 2.

China began building the current Tiangong outpost in April 2021, when it lofted the core module, which is known as Tianhe ("Harmony of the Heavens"). The two other Tiangong modules, Wentian ("Quest for the Heavens") and Mengtian ("Dreaming of the Heavens"), launched in July 2022 and October 2022, respectively.

Tiangong generally supports three astronauts at a time. The trio currently living aboard the orbiting lab are Zhang Lu, Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang, who arrived on Oct. 31 on the Shenzhou 21 mission.

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Michael Wall is the Spaceflight and Tech Editor for Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers human and robotic spaceflight, military space, and exoplanets, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.