Tianzhou 7 cargo spacecraft leaves; successor docks at Tiangong

China's Tianzhou 7 cargo spacecraft burned up as it reentered Earth's atmosphere as planned on Sunday night, according to the China Manned Space Agency.

The agency said in a news release that under the ground controller's guidance, the robotic craft reentered Earth's atmosphere at 9:25 pm. After that, most of the spaceship burned up, and a small amount of debris fell into secure sea areas.

Tianzhou 7 detached from the Tiangong space station on Nov 10 and then started a weeklong solo flight before beginning the process of atmospheric reentry.

During its solo flight, the craft fulfilled its final task — releasing a small educational satellite into its preset orbit.

The cargo vessel was launched in January from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province.

Its successor, Tianzhou 8, was launched on Friday night from the Wenchang spaceport, making it the last spacecraft to visit the Tiangong station this year.

After flying for three hours, the spacecraft docked with the space station's Tianhe core module.

As the 15th spaceship to dock with Tiangong, Tianzhou 8 is tasked with resupplying propellants to the Chinese space station and delivering living and work necessities for the Shenzhou XIX astronauts, who arrived at the massive orbital outpost on Oct 30.

The materials inside the cargo vessel are sufficient to support a three-member crew for nine months, according to its designers at the China Academy of Space Technology.

Scientific mission planners from the Chinese Academy of Sciences said they placed more than 80 packages with a combined weight of 458 kilograms inside Tianzhou 8, and the materials from the packages will be used to conduct 36 experiments onboard Tiangong.

Astronauts from the Shenzhou XIX mission began sorting and opening the packages inside the cargo ship on Saturday.

Orbiting Earth at about 400 kilometers above the ground, Tiangong has three permanent parts — a core module and two science capsules — and is regularly connected to several visiting crew and cargo spaceships.