Today's Edition
(DPA)
Three astronauts from China's Shenzhou (Magic Ship) 21 mission have landed back on Earth after a seven-month mission in space, touching down in a capsule in the Gobi Desert in northwestern China on Friday evening.
According to official reports, the three returnees - Zhang Lu, Wu Fei, and Zhang Hongzhang - spent more than 200 days in space, setting a record for the longest single mission duration by a Chinese astronaut crew to date.
Prior to this, the trio of taikonauts, as Chinese astronauts are called, handed over the Chinese space station Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) to the crew of the Shenzhou 23 mission.
According to China's CMSA space agency, astronaut Li Jiaying is the first person from the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong to be on board. She was accompanied by the two astronauts Zhu Yangzhu and Zhang Zhiyuan.
For the first time, one of the trio will remain in space for around a year instead of the usual six months. Which member of the new crew will be selected for this is to be decided during the course of the mission in orbit.
With this longer stay, China is aiming to investigate how long-term missions affect the human body.
The gap between Shenzhou 21 and 23 stems from an incident prior to the handover in November. Space debris damaged the return capsule of the Shenzhou 20. Consequently, the crew of the Shenzhou 21 had to hand over their capsule so that the astronauts could return.
Under an emergency plan, mission control sent the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft - which had actually been scheduled for a later date - into space unmanned, and the Shenzhou 21 crew returned in it. The damaged capsule later flew back to Earth unmanned.
