Chinese astronauts return to earth

BEIJING, China – Three Chinese astronauts returned safely to Earth on Sunday after a six-month stay in a space station.

Quoting China’s Human Spaceflight Agency, official Xinhua news agency reported that the Shenzhou-15 return capsule landed at the Dongfeng landing site in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Mission commander Fei Junlong and crew members Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu set a new record with four spacewalks.

Shortly after the return capsule landed, the ground team arrived at the landing site. Medical personnel confirmed that the astronauts were in good health.

China launched the Shenzhou-15 manned spacecraft on November 29, 2022.

The Shenzhou-15 crew, China’s oldest mission crew in terms of average age, has completed four outboard missions.

The crew spent 186 days on the space station complex and conducted a series of experiments.

According to Chinese space authorities, the crew succeeded in creating three-dimensional structural images of their skin cells using the two-photon microscope developed by China itself.

This achievement, the first of its kind, marks the success of experiments to verify the two-photon microscope in orbit.

During this mission, China also successfully conducted the first ignition test in the combustion chamber of the Mengtian space laboratory module.

In addition, the astronauts conducted experiments on liquid metal thermal management in the orbiting space station for the first time. 

“We have completed all the scheduled tasks and felt good after returning to the motherland,” Fei, the mission commander told Xinhua. 

He had also participated in the country’s second crewed space mission, Shenzhou-6, in October 2005.

As of May 29, Chinese astronauts had conducted eight human factors engineering research activities, 28 space medical experiments and 38 space science experiments covering life ecology, material science and fluid mechanics, and obtained valuable experimental data, according a report published by Xinhua.