Wrapping up 204 days in orbit, three Chinese astronauts flew back to Earth aboard a Shenzhou spacecraft Friday, leaving three crewmates behind on the Tiangong space station with a busted lifeboat.
Commander Chen Dong, concluding his third trip to space, and rookie crewmates Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie touched down inside their spacecraft at the Dongfeng landing zone at 1:29 am EST (06:29 UTC) Friday. The parachute-assisted landing occurred in the mid-afternoon at the return zone, located in the remote Gobi Desert of northwestern China.
Chinese space officials upended operations on the country’s Tiangong space lab last week after astronauts found damage to one of two Shenzhou return capsules docked at