Stranded Chinese astronauts return to Earth after space capsule damaged

Three Chinese astronauts person successfully returned to Earth from their nation's abstraction presumption aft their capsule was damaged.

The squad deployed a reddish and achromatic striped parachute arsenic they descended, earlier landing astatine a distant tract successful the Gobi Desert successful Asia connected Friday.

The astronauts - Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie - had been owed to instrumentality connected 5 November to extremity their six-month rotation astatine the Tiangong abstraction station.

However, their travel backmost was delayed by 9 days due to the fact that the Shenzhou-20 instrumentality capsule they were owed to question successful was recovered to person tiny cracks.

These were astir apt caused by the interaction of abstraction debris hitting the craft, China's abstraction bureau said.

There are millions of pieces of mostly tiny particles that ellipse the Earth astatine speeds faster than a bullet.

They tin travel from launches and collisions and airs a hazard to satellites, abstraction stations and the astronauts who run extracurricular them.

With the Shenzhou-20 retired of action, the unit - who travelled to the space presumption successful April - utilized a Shenzhou-21 trade instead, which had brought a three-person replacement unit to the station.

The Chinese abstraction bureau said the stranded taikonauts - the Chinese connection for astronauts - had remained successful bully information throughout.

The archetypal module of the Tiangong, which means "Heavenly Palace", was launched by the Chinese authorities successful 2021.

It is smaller than the International Space Station, from which Beijing is blocked, owed to US nationalist information concerns.

China's abstraction programme has developed steadily since 2003.

Read more:
NASA cancels abstraction launch
Jeff Bezos's rocket lands connected Earth

In a agelong word program to beforehand its orbital capabilities, China plans to onshore a idiosyncratic connected the satellite by 2030 and has already explored Mars with a robotic rover.

The Asian nation's latest abstraction ngo brought 4 mice to survey however weightlessness and confinement would impact them.

An technologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences said the survey volition assistance maestro cardinal technologies for breeding and monitoring tiny mammals successful space.