#shenzhou-20

#shenzhou-20

Three Chinese astronauts who had been stranded for days in space after a suspected piece of space junk hit their spacecraft are back on Earth, the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSE) announced on Friday. The agency also revealed that it had found tiny cracks in one of the windows of the crew's Shenzou 20 return capsulerendering it unusable. The astronauts instead returned onboard the Shenzhou 21 spacecraft, which had originally been used by Shenzou 20's replacement crew.

SpaceX and Elon Musk are once again being called on to rescue spacefarers - this time, the Chinese crew of Shenzhou-20, delayed on China's Tiangong space station after suspected space debris damage. The three-person crew including Chen Dong, Chen Zhongui, and Wang Jie, arrived in April and were supposed to return in November after a handover with the Shenzhou-21 crew. That return has been postponed while engineers assess potential damage from what reports describe as "a tiny piece of space debris."