Chinese astronauts land after historic 3-month mission to new space station
The first crewed mission to China's new space station is in the books. A spacecraft carrying Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo touched down safely in the Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia today (Sept. 17) at 1:34 a.m. EDT (0534 GMT; 1:34 p.m. Beijing time) today, bringing the historic Shenzhou 12 mission to an end.
Shenzhou 12 launched on June 16 and arrived seven hours later at Tianhe or "Harmony of the Heavens", the core module of China's Earth-orbiting space station. The Shenzhou 12 crew, commanded by Nie, spent 90 days aboard Tianhe, staying aloft about three times longer than any previous Chinese crewed spaceflight. The next crewed mission to the module, the six-month-long Shenzhou 13, is apparently scheduled to launch in mid-October. (Exact target dates are hard to come by with Chinese missions, because the nation tends not to announce many details of its spaceflight plans in advance.)
China also plans to launch two more modules to orbit, which will link up with Tianhe to form a three-piece space station called Tiangong ("Heavenly Palace"
that's about 20% as massive as the International Space Station (ISS). Assembly of this orbital outpost is expected to be completed next year.
The mission represents the latest achievement in China's growing space program. According to the BBC, in 2019, China was the first country to send a robotic rover to the far side of the moon.
https://www.space.com/shenzhou-12-astronaut-mission-lands-safely
https://www.10news.com/news/national/chinese-astronauts-return-after-90-days-aboard-space-station
A visitor looks at a mural showing an artist's rendering of China's space station at the World Robot Conference in Beijing, Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021
(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
