BEIJING, June 5. /TASS/. China’s spacecraft with three people on board, Shenzhou-14, docked with the orbital outpost, the China Central Television broadcaster announced on Sunday.

According to the broadcaster, Shenzhou-14 spent about seven hours before docking in an automated mode with the radial port of the Tianhe module at 5:42 p.m. Sunday (Beijing time).

The spacecraft blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China using the Long March-2F carrier rocket at 10:44 a.m. local time. Three people aboard Shenzhou-14 are Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe.

The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) reported earlier that 577 seconds after the lift off the spaceship separated from the carrier rocket and entered the designated orbit. The crew of three aboard the spacecraft is feeling well and the launch was a complete success, according to the CMSA.

China’s Xinhua news agency reported later that "the trio will cooperate with the ground team to complete the assembly and construction of the Tiangong space station, developing it from a single-module structure into a national space laboratory with three modules - the core module Tianhe and two lab modules Wentian and Mengtian."

The crew will spend six months in orbit before returning to Earth in December.

The Chinese space station is currently at the altitude of about 400 kilometers (over 248.5 miles) and is intended to stay operational in orbit for more than 10 years. It’s designed for three people.

In April 2021, China orbited the core module of its national space station. Three crewmembers of the Shenzhou-12 manned spacecraft worked aboard the national space station from June 17 to September 16. Over this period, the taikonauts (the name of spaceflight participants accepted in China) made two spacewalks to assemble equipment.

Overall, the assembly of all of the space station’s systems will require about twelve months and will be completed in 2022. The program envisages seven more launches to deliver another two Wentian and Mengtian laboratory modules, two cargo spaceships and three manned expeditions with taikonauts into orbit.