Chinese astronauts return to Earth after six months on space station
Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Saturday after spending six months on the Tiangong space station.
The return journey took about nine hours by using a new procedure that shortened the journey time from around 24 hours for the previous mission.
The Shenzhou 13 capsule landed in Inner Mongolia at around 9.56am on Saturday.
During the mission, astronaut Wang Yaping carried out the first spacewalk by a Chinese woman. Wang and crewmates Zhai Zhigang and Ye Guangfu beamed back physics lessons for high school students.
China launched its first astronaut into space in 2003 and landed robot rovers on the moon in 2013 and on Mars last year. Officials have discussed a possible crewed mission to the moon.
On Saturday, state TV showed images from inside the capsule as it traveled at 200 meters per second over Africa before entering the atmosphere.
The trio were the second crew aboard Tiangong, or Heavenly Palace. Its core module, Tianhe, was launched in April 2021. Plans call for completing construction this year by adding two more modules.
Authorities have yet to announce a date for launching the next Tiangong crew.
Six months is the duration of a normal astronaut mission to the International Space Station (a program that China is not a part of). Some ISS missions last longer than that, however; NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov recently came back to Earth after 355 days aboard the orbiting lab.
Shenzhou 13 set other national marks as well. For example, the mission’s Wang Yaping became the first woman to live aboard Tianhe and the first Chinese woman ever to conduct a spacewalk.
Wang was joined on Shenzhou 13 by Ye Guangfu and Zhai Zhigang, who commanded the mission. The trio lifted off on Oct. 15, rising off a pad at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert.
The Shenzhou 13 crew also spent some time getting Tianhe ready for its next round of visitors, which will arrive relatively soon; the Shenzhou 14 mission is expected to launch in early June.
Shenzhou 13 was the second crewed mission to Tianhe, which launched to low Earth orbit in April 2021. The first was Shenzhou 12, which lifted off in June 2021 and landed that October.
Two robotic Tianzhou cargo spacecraft have visited Tianhe as well, and another is expected to launch toward the core module next month.
Tiangong is China’s third space station following predecessors launched in 2011 and 2016.
The government announced in 2020 that China’s first reusable spacecraft had landed following a test flight but no photos or details of the vehicle have been released.
On Tuesday, President Xi Jinping visited the launch site in Wenchang on the southern island of Hainan from which the Tianhe module was fired into orbit.
“Persist in pursuing the frontiers of world aerospace development and the major strategic needs of national aerospace,” Xi told staff at the site, all of them in military uniform.
