Three Chinese astronauts will return to Earth on Friday using a different spacecraft after space debris struck their return vessel last week, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said.<\/p>\n
The crew, part of the Shenzhou-20 mission that began in April, had been scheduled to return on Nov. 5 before what CMSA described as a \u201csuspected impact from tiny space debris\u201d forced a delay. The setback is unusual for China\u2019s crewed spaceflight programme, which in recent years has operated on a tightly controlled schedule while achieving milestones such as deploying its first astronauts born in the 1990s and conducting a world-record spacewalk.<\/p>\n
China has sent crews of three astronauts to its Tiangong space station for six-month rotations since 2021 under its Shenzhou, or \u201cDivine Vessel,\u201d missions. Each mission typically includes a handover period in which the departing crew and the newly arrived team overlap on the station, with two Shenzhou spacecraft docked simultaneously.<\/p>\n
CMSA said the Shenzhou-20 astronauts will now return aboard the Shenzhou-21 spacecraft, which arrived two weeks ago to begin its own six-month stay. The change of vehicles indicates the Shenzhou-20 craft sustained damage significant enough for mission controllers to deem it unsuitable for the journey home.<\/p>\n
The switch creates new logistical challenges for China\u2019s space programme. With Shenzhou-21 set to return to Earth far earlier than planned, the crew it delivered will remain on the station without a spacecraft for emergency evacuation until another vehicle arrives.<\/p>\n
CMSA said the Shenzhou-22 spacecraft will be launched \u201cat an appropriate time in the future.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three Chinese astronauts will return to Earth on Friday using a different spacecraft after space debris struck their return vessel last week, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said. The crew, part of the Shenzhou-20 mission that began in April, had been scheduled to return on Nov. 5 before what CMSA described as a \u201csuspected […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[135,6326,6327,79],"class_list":["post-20151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-china","tag-cmsa","tag-shenzhou-20","tag-space-debris"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20151"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}