A few hours ago, the three Chinese taikonauts of the Shenzhou 15 mission returned to Earth after spending a little more than six months on the Chinese space station Tiangong. The three taikonauts Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming, and Zhang Lu had left the station a few hours earlier to land at a site called Dongfeng in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. A procedure that significantly reduces the time to return to Earth already tested in the past worked again and is becoming routine.

Launched on November 29, 2022, the Shenzhou 15 mission is another milestone in China’s space program. Upon arriving at the Tiangong Space Station, the taikonauts met with the crew from the previous mission, and before returning to Earth they met with the crew from the next mission. This marks a continuity in the presence of a crew on the station, which consequently is now working at full capacity after completion in the course of 2022.

The availability of the Wentian and Mengtian laboratories made it possible to increase the scientific experiments to be conducted on the Tiangong space station. The Shenzhou 15 mission tasks included some spacewalks to install various equipment outside the station.

On May 10, 2023, the Tianzhou 6 space cargo arrived with about 7,400 kilograms of supplies of various types including those for the crew such as food and water and those for the station such as fuel, scientific experiments and instruments. It was the first resupply mission after the full activation of the Tiangong space station’s new laboratories, so the transport of scientific and technological payloads for tasks in orbit has become more important than ever.

Information about technologies developed in orbit is decidedly limited. The Chinese authorities offer occasional updates on the national space program, which is expected to include a new expansion of the Tiangong space station in the coming years.

However, the announcement that made the headlines concerns the plans to send taikonauts to the Moon by 2030. It’s a confirmation of Chinese ambitions in space, in this case, in a type of mission that only the USA has accomplished. Thinking of the American Artemis program, it seems even more that a new space race has started.