It was night in China when the three Chinese taikonauts of the Shenzhou 18 mission returned to Earth after spending a little more than six months on the Chinese space station Tiangong, where they arrived on April 25. The three taikonauts Ye Guangfu, Li Cong, and Li Guangsu had left the station about nine hours earlier to land at a site called Dongfeng in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It’s a procedure that significantly reduces the time to return to Earth and now has become routine.
During the Shenzhou 18 mission, two spacewalks were performed. On May 28, 2024, Ye Guangfu and Li Guangsu conducted the longest spacewalk for taikonauts, spending about 8.5 hours installing space debris shields outside the Tiangong space station. On July 3, 2024, Ye Guangfu and Li Cong installed additional shields and other equipment.
Mission commander Ye Guangfu became the first taikonaut to spend a total of more than a year in orbit between the Shenzhou 13 and Shenzhou 18 missions. This may not seem like much when you consider that there are several astronauts and cosmonauts who have completed more missions with many more combined days. China began its space program well after the USA and the USSR, but it’s catching up.
In the future, there will be more veteran taikonauts who will accumulate a lot of days in orbit. The Chinese space program continues, sometimes with some major or minor problems. During the descent of the Shenzhou 18 capsule, a hole was visible in the parachute, similar damage to that which occurred at the end of the Shenzhou 16 mission. In both cases, the taikonauts were unharmed despite landing at a higher speed than programmed. Today, the mission was declared a complete success as well, but there’s still some fine-tuning to be done in the parachute system.
The taikonauts brought back to Earth several samples that include microorganisms and various types of materials that are difficult to produce in the conditions of Earth’s gravity. China has a very ambitious space program and the experiments cover a variety of scientific and technological fields.
The microorganisms brought back to Earth include archaea with a metabolism that generates methane and species resistant to radiation. The materials produced are connected to improvements in the field of optical fibers, alloys resistant to high temperatures, and nanoparticles produced in experiments about the production of special materials for use in extraterrestrial environments. Many experiments are connected to the projects of other space missions, including the ones that might take taikonauts to the Moon.
