Three Chinese astronauts stranded on China’s Tiangong Space Station due to debris believed to be space debris have returned to Earth, officials announced.
The crew members of China’s Shenzhou 20 mission, Chen Dong, Wang Jie and Chen Zhongrui, left the space station in a return capsule on Friday (November 14) and landed in northern China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The crew spent 204 days in orbit, a new record for a Taikonaut crew.
The Taikonaut trio began their record-breaking stay at the Tiangong Space Station (meaning “Heavenly Palace” in Chinese) in April. They were originally scheduled to return to Earth on November 5, but hours before their scheduled departure, their original return capsule collided with what appeared to be space debris, forcing them to extend their stay in space.
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Earlier this week, representatives of the China Manned Space Administration (CMSA) announced that engineers were testing a backup capsule to bring the stranded Tyco astronauts home. The Shenzhou 20 crew has now returned to the return capsule of the Shenzhou 21 spacecraft, and a replacement crew member has been taken to the space station.
The Shenzhou-21 spacecraft undocked from the Tiangong Space Station at 11:14 a.m. Beijing time on Friday (10:14 p.m. ET on Thursday, November 13). The return capsule carrying the ancient astronauts then separated from the Shenzhou 21 orbital capsule at 2:49 pm Beijing time (1:49 am ET) and landed on Earth at 4:40 pm Beijing time (3:40 am ET), Xinhua News Agency reported.
Uncertainty remains as to what happened to the original return capsule. But the amount of space junk on Earth is increasing, with things like rocket boosters and other discarded space travel objects cluttering the area, increasing the risk of collisions with manned spacecraft.
According to Xinhua news agency, the crew of Shenzhou 20 are said to be in good health after an eventful stay. 204 days in orbit may be a record for the Chinese crew, but it’s far from the longest time humans have spent in space. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams famously spent 286 consecutive days aboard the International Space Station (ISS) from 2024 to 2025, having returned to Earth without passengers due to problems with Boeing’s Starliner. The astronauts ultimately returned home aboard a SpaceX spacecraft 272 days after they were scheduled to return to Earth.
However, astronauts often stay on the ISS for long periods of time, and astronaut Frank Rubio accidentally spent 371 days on the ISS between 2022 and 2023, setting a U.S. record.
Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov holds the world record for consecutive days in space, or an otherworldly record, for 437 days in Russia’s former Mir space station between 1994 and 1995.
Spending an extended period of time in space can have a variety of health effects, but body changes usually return to normal within six months of returning to Earth. That said, researchers still have a lot to learn about how space travel affects human health.
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