Three Chinese astronauts stranded in space for more than a week now have a safe way back to Earth after an unmanned “lifeboat” spacecraft is dispatched to pick them up in orbit at the Tiangong space station. However, the trio will not return home until the spring of 2026, when their original mission is scheduled to end.
The rescue mission ended a nearly month-long drama that began when a piece of suspected space junk struck and damaged another return capsule hours before passengers departed from the space station, setting off a chain reaction of orbital strandings.
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On Monday (Nov. 24), the unmanned Shenzhou 22 spacecraft successfully launched into low Earth orbit (LEO) aboard a Long March 2F rocket, taking off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at around 11:11 p.m. ET, Live Science’s sister site Space.com reported. The empty return capsule, which then docked at Tiangong Base, would eventually bring back the Shenzhou 21 crew members, Zhang Lu, Wu Fei, and Zhang Hongzhang, who arrived on October 31st.
The astronaut trio was originally sent to replace Shenzhou 20 crew members Wang Jie, Chen Zhongrui and Chen Dong, who were scheduled to return home on November 5 after a six-month stay in space. However, although the handover with the Shenzhou 21 crew was successful, the return mission was canceled at the last minute after the China Manned Space Administration (CMSA) discovered a large crack in the return capsule’s observation port.
The Shenzhou 20 crew then returned to Earth aboard the Shenzhou 21 spacecraft, which landed in the Gobi Desert on November 14. However, this meant that the crew of Shenzhou 21 were left stranded at Tiangong without being able to safely return home. The damaged Shenzhou-20 capsule remained docked to the space station throughout the ordeal and may have been used as a last resort. However, this was not confirmed. (The damaged spacecraft could be separated from the station and deorbited in the coming days or weeks.)
“I’m so glad they did that.” [Shenzhou-20 crew] But it’s a little disconcerting that the replacement crew apparently doesn’t have a vehicle to get back to Earth,” Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability at the Colorado-based nonprofit Secure World Foundation, previously told Scientific American.
This story unfolded as dictated by the CMSA protocol. But what remains unclear is why these protocols left the crew stranded in space without a viable return capsule, and why it took more than a week to launch Shenzhou 22 into space, especially since a backup return capsule and its launch vehicle were on standby before the entire story began, Space News reports.
If an emergency such as a fire or a collision with space debris had occurred in Tiangong, the three stranded people might not have been able to evacuate safely. Fortunately, nothing like that happened. But there were still risks.
The situation is reminiscent of another recent stranded astronaut story involving NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. The pair arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) in June 2024 for a mission that lasted about a week. However, the Boeing Starliner’s capsule suffered multiple mechanical failures, resulting in a stay of around nine months, before finally returning to Earth in March.
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Previously, in 2023, NASA astronaut Frank Rubio inadvertently set the record for the longest single spaceflight by an American (371 days) after his return capsule was hit by a meteorite while docking at the ISS, delaying his departure.
But in both previous cases, the stranded astronauts could have always safely returned to Earth aboard the remaining return capsule, which was already docked at the ISS.
In addition to highlighting the urgent need to clean up LEO space debris, some researchers believe the incident also proves the need for some form of global space rescue service to return stranded astronauts in emergencies, according to Space.com. One expert described this as a “massive wake-up call.”
However, CMSA does not seem worried about the incident happening again in the near future.
“This emergency launch is China’s first, but we hope it will be the last of human space travel,” CMSA official He Yuanjun told state media after the Shenzhou 22 launch, Reuters reported.
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