Three astronauts have returned to Earth after completing a six-month mission on a Chinese space station. They went into space on June 5 to oversee the final phase of construction of the Tiangong Space Station.
The Shenzo-14 spacecraft landed safely in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Sunday. The space agency said the mission was a complete success. The audio broadcast by CCTV said that the returning commander Chen Dong and his teammates Liu Yang and Cai Zhuhe had no physical problems.
The tourists were taken out of the probe by the staff who were ready at the landing site. All three of them undocked from the space station at 8 pm local time. Then it landed on earth after about nine hours of travel.
Yang, China’s first female astronaut, said her days on the space station were unforgettable and she was happy to return to her motherland. The three astronauts monitored the arrival of the second and third modules for Tiangong and led the inspection and testing of new systems.
A new team of three Chinese astronauts arrived at the space station on Wednesday. The new team took off aboard the Shenzo-15 spacecraft from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China’s Gobi Desert.
They will stay at the station for six months. A spokesman for the China Manned Space Administration said the new team would focus on installing instruments and other systems around the space station. After the Soviet Union and the US, China is the third country in history to send astronauts into space and build a space station. Tiangong Space Station, or ‘Heavenly Palace’, is China’s new permanent space station.
English Summary: Chinese astronauts return to Earth after six-month mission