Chinese space station’s delayed cargo ship has a date with a giant robotic arm
- Tianzhou 2 will not only take fuel and supplies to Tiangong Space Station but be grabbed and redocked by a 10-metre arm that crawls around its exterior
- The manoeuvre will test the robotic technology before the station’s first crew arrives to finish building it
The craft will take fuel and supplies to Tianhe, the first and central module of the space station in orbit. Its mission is critical because it will test new equipment including a giant robotic arm, to pave the way for the arrival of the station’s first human crew a few months later.
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Design of robotic arm for China’s Tiangong Space Station revealed
China built the Tianzhou with the aim of reducing the space station’s operational cost. To maintain proper functioning of the International Space Station (ISS), member nations have to launch a cargo ship every two to three months, whereas the smaller Chinese space station and the Tianzhou’s greater capacity mean cargo missions need only visit every six to eight months, according to the China manned space programme office.
The Tianzhou 2 mission will test a technology critical for construction work in space but new to China’s space programme. On the Tianhe core module is a powerful 10-metre robotic arm capable of grabbing and lifting a 20-tonne object, and designed to be able to crawl all over the surface of the space station.
Since this is the first time China has deployed such large-scale and sophisticated robotic technology in space, scientists and engineers have made it a priority to make sure the arm works properly before it is given tasks to help astronauts set up the station.