Tiangong: Expedition 5

Expedition 5 began with the undocking of Shenzhou-15.

China's unmanned Tianzhou-5 spacecraft re-docked with the Tiangong space station at 19:10 UTC on June 05, 2023 after more than a month of independent flying, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMS).The cargo spacecraft separated from Tiangong on May 05, 2023 to leave room for its successor, Tianzhou-6. It had been flying freely for 33 days before the re-docking.

The crew installed a device for radiation exposure experiments in early June 2023. The device was installed on a platform on the Mengtian module. Because the cargo lock was being used, an extraboard operation was necessary. The cube-shaped device has 13 interchangeable containers for biological material. In this first deployment, three individual containers containing microorganisms, nematodes, and rice and cress seeds were used. During the experiment, roundworms were bred in space for the first time. Before the next crew change, the radiation exposure experiment was brought back to the space station. The astronauts replaced the sample container with new ones.

The Feitian EVA suit operates with an internal pressure of 40 kPa. This has the advantage that a decompression only takes 30 minutes, but every movement is strenuous. After climbing 50 to 60 meters along the space station, the astronauts have to take a breather halfway.

On July 20, 2023 Jing Haipeng and Zhu Yangzhu performed the first and probably planned only spacewalk (7h 55m). They installed & lifted the bracket for panoramic camera B of core module, unlocked & lifted panoramic camera A/B of Mengtian lab module.

Tianzhou-5 cargo spacecraft separated from Tianhe core module at 08:46 UTC on September 11, 2023. Controlled reentry was planned for September 12, 2023 at ~01:13 UTC.