Tianzhou 3 was the second cargo resupply mission to the Tianhe core module (TCM) of the under-construction Tiangong space station, carrying over six tons of supplies. The spacecraft successfully docked at the TCM's aft port seven hours after launch at 14:08 UTC.
On 20 April 2022, Tianzhou 3 successfully relocated itself from Tianhe's aft port to the forward port to make the aft port available for docking by Tianzhou 4.[3] On 17 July it was undocked for deorbiting, making way for the installation of the Wentian module.[2] It reentered the Earth's atmosphere and burned up as planned on 27 July 2022.[4]
The Tianzhou cargo ship has several notable differences with the Tiangong stations from which it is derived. It has only three segments of solar panels (against 4 for Tiangong), but has 4 maneuvering engines (against 2).[5]
Launches are separated by dots ( • ), payloads by commas ( , ), multiple names for the same satellite by slashes ( / ). Crewed flights are underlined. Launch failures are marked with the † sign. Payloads deployed from other spacecraft are (enclosed in parentheses).