A Chinese space crew is stranded at the country\u2019s\u00a0Tiangong space station\u00a0after tiny pieces of space debris were believed to have struck their return capsule, China\u2019s spaceflight agency said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The three-member Shenzhou-20 team had been scheduled to return to Earth on Wednesday, but their mission has been temporarily extended as engineers conduct impact analysis and risk assessments on the damaged spacecraft, the\u00a0China Manned Space Agency\u00a0(CMSA) said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Their return date has been postponed indefinitely, according to state broadcaster CCTV, which offered no further details.<\/p>\n
The crew\u2019s return capsule is believed to have been hit by tiny fragments of space junk \u2013 an increasing hazard in low Earth orbit. <\/p>\n
CMSA has not specified the extent of the damage or what repairs, if any, will be required.<\/p>\n
If the spacecraft cannot be repaired, protocol states the Shenzhou-20 crew will use the Shenzhou-21 team\u2019s capsule to return to Earth.<\/p>\n
Chinese astronauts Zhang Lu, Wu Fei, and Zhang Hongzhang wave at a send-off ceremony at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Oct. 31, 2025. ZUMAPRESS.com<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Shenzhou program\u00a0regularly sends crews of three Chinese astronauts to and from the Tiangong space station for 6-month missions, where they carry out tasks ranging from scientific experiments to repairing debris damage.<\/p>\n
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The Shenzhou-20 astronauts \u2014 mission commander Chen Dong, fighter pilot Chen Zhongrui, and engineer Wang Jie \u2014 arrived at Tiangong in April for a 6-month rotation.<\/p>\n
They were nearing the end of their mission when the issue occurred.<\/p>\n
The three-member Shenzhou-20 team had been scheduled to return to Earth on Wednesday, but their mission has been temporarily extended as engineers conduct impact analysis and risk assessments on the damaged spacecraft, the\u00a0China Manned Space Agency\u00a0(CMSA) said. Xinhua\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
Chinese astronauts Zhang Lu (C), Wu Fei (R) and Zhang Hongzhang attend a send-off ceremony at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Oct. 31, 2025. Xinhua\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
Their replacements, part of the Shenzhou-21 mission, successfully docked with the station on Saturday. <\/p>\n
That crew consists of astronauts Zhang Hongzhang, Wu Fei, and Zhang Lu.<\/p>\n
Since launching its crewed spaceflight program in 2003, China has steadily expanded its capabilities \u2014 building its own space station and setting its sights on\u00a0landing astronauts on the moon\u00a0by 2030.<\/p>\n
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Chinese space crew is stranded at the country\u2019s\u00a0Tiangong space station\u00a0after tiny pieces of space debris were believed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[144,718,79,193,1513,965],"class_list":["post-275809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-china","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space","tag-spacex","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}