A few hours ago, the three Chinese taikonauts of the Shenzhou 13 mission returned to Earth after spending almost exactly six months on the Chinese space station’s Tianhe core module. Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping, and Ye Guangfu departed Tianhe about nine hours earlier to land at a site called Dongfeng in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. A procedure that greatly reduces the reentry time to Earth worked perfectly. This was the first Chinese space mission to last six months, roughly twice as much as Shenzhou 12. This is the normal duration for the upcoming missions to the Chinese space station.

Launched on October 15, 2021, the Shenzhou 13 mission aimed to begin what is scheduled to be the normal rotation of the crew of taikonauts, as the Chinese call their astronauts, on the Chinese space station, currently made of the core module. The previous mission had already been verified that all systems worked properly.

On November 7, 2021, the first spacewalk was conducted, lasting about 6 hours and 25 minutes, by Zhai Zhigang and Wang Yaping, the first Chinese woman to perform this type of activity. On December 26, 2021, Ye Guangfu and Zhai Zhigang conducted another spacewalk, which lasted 6 hours and 11 minutes.

The information provided by the Chinese about their activities in space is limited, so not much is known about the experiments conducted. However, the Shenzhou 13 mission also included public activities with broadcasts from the Chinese space station for educational purposes to inspire the new Chinese generations to study science and technology. During this period, the relations between the USA and China are tense but on April 10 there was a special broadcast in which the taikonauts answered questions from American students.

As the future of the International Space Station has grown cloudier with new tensions between Russia and other nations, China continues its progress in its own space program. The health assessments of the taikonauts and the work conducted on the Chinese space station will aid future developments, which include sending more modules over the next few months of 2022. At that point, the crew of the Shenzhou 14 mission, which is scheduled to be launched on June 5, 2022, should be on the station.