By Staff Reporters

China launched cargo spacecraft Tianzhou-7 from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in the southern island province of Hainan on January 17 to deliver supplies to its orbiting space station Tiangong.

The spacecraft completed its status setting and docked with the space station on January 18, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said.

Tianzhou 7, designed and built by the China Academy of Space Technology in Beijing, is the 12th spacecraft to visit Tiangong. It has the largest carrying capacity and the highest transportation efficiency in its category in the world, according to the mission planners.

With the Tianzhou-7 mission, the space application system sent 16 standard cargo packages, one set of cell life support devices, and one set of 4 C microfluidic chips to the space station. In total, there are 61 sets of products, weighing approximately 473 kilograms, according to Liu Wei, chief designer of the space application system for the Tianzhou-7 mission.

"They have been put together by 18 domestic universities and institutes, and will be used in 33 experiments involving life and material sciences, microgravity fluid physics and combustion research," Liu said.

They also contain human bone cells, which will be observed and analyzed for changes in the microgravity environment in space, according to Shang Peng, a professor at Northwestern Polytechnical University’s School of Life Sciences.

The results will help scientists better understand conditions such as bone density loss and muscle atrophy, and work out solutions to improve the health of astronauts in space as well as people on Earth, Shang added.

China will launch the Tianzhou-8 cargo spacecraft from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site this year.