Chinese astronauts return from space station after delay blamed on space
debris damage
[November 14, 2025]
By KEN MORITSUGU
BEIJING
(AP) — Three Chinese astronauts returned from their nation's space
station Friday after more than a week's delay because their original
return capsule was damaged, likely from being hit by space debris.
The team left their Shenzhou-20 spacecraft in orbit and came back using
the recently arrived Shenzhou-21 that had ferried a three-person
replacement crew to the station, China’s Manned Space Agency said. |
Journalists film Chinese astronauts for the upcoming Shenzhou 20
mission, from left, Wang Jie, captain Chen Dong and Chen Zhongrui wave
at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, Wednesday,
April 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, file) |
|
It wasn’t clear if the change in spacecraft would affect the
timing of future missions to the Tiangong space station. The
space agency said that Shenzhou-22 would be launched but did not
specify when.
The return capsule deployed a red and white striped parachute
before coming down in the late afternoon at a remote site in
northern China's Gobi Desert, about five and a half hours after
leaving the space station. The impact sent up a large cloud of
dust in the barren landscape.
The astronauts — Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie — had
been on a six-month rotation and were originally scheduled to
return Nov. 5, four days after the new crew arrived.
Their return was delayed for nine days. The original return plan
was scrapped because a window in the Shenzhou-20 return capsule
had tiny cracks, most likely caused by impact from space debris,
the space agency said Friday.
There are millions of pieces of mostly tiny debris circling the
Earth at speeds faster than a bullet flies. They can come from
launches and collisions and pose a risk to satellites, space
stations and the astronauts who operate outside them.
The temporarily stranded astronauts, who had traveled to the
space station in April, conducted experiments with the new crew
and were " in good condition, working and living normally,” the
agency said earlier this week.
China's space program has made steady progress since 2003.
Besides building its own space station, it has explored Mars
with a robotic rover and aims to land a person on the moon by
2030.
China built the Tiangong space station after the country was
excluded from the International Space Station over U.S. national
security concerns. China’s space program is controlled by its
military.
The Tiangong, which means “Heavenly Palace,” is smaller than the
International Space Station.
The latest mission brought four mice to study how weightlessness
and confinement would affect them. The study will help master
key technologies for breeding and monitoring small mammals in
space, an engineer from the Chinese Academy of Sciences said.
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