JIUQUAN (TDI): After staying for six months in space station, the Shenzhou-18 crew consisting of three Chinese astronauts has returned to Earth safely.
Shenzhou-18’s return capsule, carrying astronauts Ye Guangfu, Li Cong and Li Guangsu, touched down at the Dongfeng landing site in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region at 1:24 a.m. (Beijing Time) on Monday, Xinhua reported.
China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said that the crew had all left the return capsule by 2:15 a.m.
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The astronauts, are all in good health and the Shenzhou-18 manned mission is a success, according to the report.
Ye, the mission commander, has become the first Chinese astronaut with an accumulative spaceflight time of more than a year, a new record for the longest duration of stay in orbit by any Chinese astronaut.
Earlier, he had joined the Shenzhou-13 mission from October 2021 to April 2022.
“Chinese astronauts have flown to space in successive missions. I believe that the record of the duration in orbit will be broken in the near future,” Xinhua quoted Ye saying as.
At 12:34 a.m., the Beijing Aerospace Control Center issued a return command through the ground station, and the return capsule of the Shenzhou-18 manned spaceship separated from its orbiting capsule.
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The mission replaced the burner for the gas experiment in the combustion experiment cabinet and test samples in the fluid physics experiment cabinet as planned.
The astronauts also conducted in-orbit training on spacecraft rendezvous and docking.
Their first spacewalk in May set a record for the longest single spacewalk by Chinese astronauts, according to Xinhua.
