The Chinese crew of the Shenzhou-20 mission landed this Friday (14) in the Dongfeng field, in the Inner Mongolia region, in the north of the country, aboard the Shenzhou-21 spacecraft, after its own return capsule was rendered unusable by damage caused by space debris.
The capsule carrying them landed at 4:40 pm (5:40 am in Brasília), Chinese state media reported.
After opening the hatch, the medical team confirmed at the landing site that Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie are in “good physical condition”.
The crew spent 204 days in orbit, a period that sets a new record for a single team of Chinese astronauts.
During the mission, they performed four extravehicular sorties and several payload transfer operations, as well as numerous experiments in areas such as microgravity physics, materials science and space biology.
Shenzhou-21 normally completed the previous maneuvers, including the separation of the orbital module and, later, the separation of the propulsion module. After that, the capsule began its descent.
The three astronauts returned on Shenzhou-21 after technicians detected “microcracks” in the glass of one of the capsule’s windows, probably caused by the impact of space debris. This damage left the spacecraft “unsuitable” for a safe manned descent, which is why it will remain in orbit for testing, according to Chinese space program officials.
Shenzhou-21 arrived on November 1 and remained attached to the Chinese space station, Tiangong, as an emergency vehicle. The Shenzhou-20 astronauts lived with their successors on the orbital platform during the additional days required for safety checks.
The Asian giant’s social networks closely followed the later-than-expected return of the three astronauts. “Welcome back home,” wrote hundreds of users on the Weibo social network, similar to X, which is blocked on the Asian giant.
Launched last April, the Shenzhou-20 crew completed more than six months in orbit carrying out scientific experiments and technical tests aimed at consolidating Tiangong’s operability.
Tiangong (Heavenly Palace in Chinese) is designed to operate for at least ten years and could become the world’s only inhabited space station after the retirement of the International Space Station, scheduled for the end of this decade.
In recent years, Beijing has reinforced its space program with ambitious missions, such as the landing of the Chang’e 4 probe on the far side of the Moon and the arrival on Mars with Tianwen-1, and plans to build, together with other countries, a scientific base at the lunar south pole.
