China's Shenzhou-19 astronauts return to Earth: state media

BEIJING: Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Wednesday after six months on the country’s space station, state media footage showed, as Beijing advances towards its aim to become a major celestial power.

Beijing has ploughed billions of dollars into its space programme in recent years, aiming to fly a crewed mission to the Moon by 2030 and eventually build a base on the lunar surface.

Its latest launch last week ferried a trio of astronauts to the Tiangong space station, heralding the start of the Shenzhou-20 mission.

They have taken over from Shenzhou-19 crew Cai Xuzhe, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze, whose landing capsule touched down in the northern Inner Mongolia region on Wednesday.

Pictures from state broadcaster CCTV showed the capsule, attached to a red-and-white striped parachute, descending through an azure sky before touching down in a cloud of brown desert dust.

Its occupants had worked on the space station since October, where they carried out experiments and set a new record for the longest ever spacewalk.

The crew were initially scheduled to return on Tuesday, but the mission was postponed due to bad weather at the landing site, according to Chinese authorities.

Wang, 35, was China’s only woman spaceflight engineer at the time of the launch, according to the Chinese Manned Space Agency (CMSA).

Commander Cai, a 48-year-old former air force pilot, previously served aboard Tiangong as part of the Shenzhou-14 mission in 2022.

Song, a 34-year-old onetime air force pilot, completed the group of spacefarers popularly dubbed “taikonauts” in China.