 Some new information has emerged about China's new spacecraft and new rockets. This is your space pod for March 10, 2015. China's lead spacecraft designer, Zhejiang Ping, told the Zhenhao news industry some new information about their plans for Tiangong-2. Tiangong-2 is based off of the Tianguangguang, but is actually going to be much larger. It's going to be 14.4 meters in length and 4.2 meters in diameter, whereas Tiangong-1 was only 10.5 meters long and 3.4 meters in diameter. The other difference is that Tiangong-2 will have two docking ports as opposed to only one on the first station, and that will enable both crewed and unmanned cargo flights to the station. Some of the new details that have emerged about this unmanned cargo vessel is that it's going to be called the Tiangzhou, which means Heavenly Vessel in English. And it's going to be about the same size and length as the Tiangong-1 station, and it will come in three variants, pressurized, unpressurized, and a combo of both. The Tiangzhou will be able to carry six metric tons of supplies to their stations, and the whole point of Tiangong-2 is to prove that they can have orbital resupply missions to lengthen the life of their space stations. The first Tiangzhou spacecraft has already been built and is undergoing some advanced testing, such as hot-fire tests of the service module engines and thermal pressure testing, and that usually means that any spacecraft going through those sort of tests are usually only a few months away from being able to fly. However, the Tiangong-2 space station module has not yet been completed, and that of course would need to happen first. The plan is for their new space station to fly on a Long March 5 rocket, and their cargo vessel to fly on a Long March 7 rocket. Neither one of those rockets have launched yet, and it's unknown whether or not these two spacecraft would be the first payloads on the maiden flights of those rockets. Regardless which flight these two spacecraft would actually fly on, they're supposed to be launching from the upgraded Wenchang Space Center in Hainan Province, or Hainan Island. And something that's really cool about Hainan is that it's only 19 degrees north of the equator, and just the location will enable China to be able to send a lot more mass into orbit. The original Tiangong-1 space station had three visiting spacecraft, Shenzhao 8, 9, and 10. However, with Tiangong-2, so far there's only two visiting spacecraft that have been put on the books. The first one is the Tianzhou-1, their cargo vessel, and then Shenzhao-11. No crew has yet been selected for that mission, and there hasn't been any details yet as to how long that mission would actually stay there for, and whether or not there would be any other follow-on missions after that. China has indicated in the past that it would send multiple crewed missions to Tiangong-2, however the plans have changed so many times over the years and the configuration of the station has changed, and the main point now is to prove that they can achieve unmanned cargo capabilities. The follow-up to this mission, Tiangong-3, will be able to support crewed flights for twice as long due to an advanced life support system, and the goal of Tiangong-3 is to prove that that life support system and recycling systems work. Tiangong-3 will essentially be a prototype for the large space station's core module, in the same respect that Tiangong-2 is a prototype for the experiment modules, and Tiangong-1 is a prototype for the unmanned cargo ship. I wish China the best of luck in the coming months as they prepare to launch Tiangong-2 as well as their new cargo ship, the Tianzhou. Thank you very much for watching this space pod. My name is Michael Clark, and I would love to hear your comments either on YouTube or any of your favorite social media about what you think about China's plans for their manned space program. Please subscribe to our new channel, TMRO, so that you can be notified anytime we release new videos, and let any of your space geek friends know that we are releasing our new content here so that they don't miss out on any of the cool stuff that's happening. This is of course a crowd-funded show, and every penny helps to be able to bring you content like this. So if you're interested in helping us out, then please visit patreon.com to find out more information about how you can help us bring you tomorrow's epic space content today. By the way, I should mention that the Chinese Space Agency and the European Space Agency have signed an agreement to cooperate in manned space flight, and that could change all of these plans.