A child stands near a giant screen showing the image of the Tianhe Space Station on the country’s Space Day at the Chinese Museum of Science and Technology in Beijing, China, April 24, 2021. REUTERS / Tingshu Wang / File photo
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SHANGHAI, April 16 (Reuters) – Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Saturday after 183 days in space, state television reported, completing the country’s longest space mission with a crew to date.
The astronauts landed nine hours after leaving a key module on China’s first space station.
While in orbit, astronauts from the Shenzhou-13 mission took manual control of the Tianhe housing module for what state media called a “docking experiment” with the Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft.
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After their launch in October, astronauts Jai Jiang, Ye Guangfu and a female crew member, Wang Yaping, spent 183 days in space, completing the fifth of 11 missions needed to complete the space station by the end of the year.
Shenzhou-13 was the second of four planned manned missions to complete construction of the space station, which began last April. Shenzhou-12 returned to Earth in September.
China’s next two missions will be Tianzhou-4, a cargo spacecraft, and the Shenzhou-14 mission of three, said Shao Limin, deputy technology manager for the manned spacecraft, quoted by state media.
Banned by the United States from participating in the International Space Station (ISS) in orbit, China has spent the last decade developing technology to build its own space station, the only one in the world other than the ISS.
China, which aims to become a space power by 2030, has successfully launched probes to explore Mars and became the first country to land a spacecraft on the other side of the moon.
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Report by Liangping Gao in Beijing and Andrew Galbraith in Shanghai; Edited by Raju Gopalakrishnan
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