Repaired Shenzhou-20 Returns to Earth Empty

China’s Shenzhou-20 spacecraft has successfully returned to Earth from the Tiangong space station. No one was aboard. Apparently damaged by space debris, it was deemed unsafe to return the crew and they came home on Shenzhou-21’s spacecraft in November. The Shenzhou-21 crew, which remains aboard Tiangong, repaired the window using a specially designed treatment delivered on Shenzhou-22 that apparently was effective.

China’s Xinhua news agency reported that the capsule touched down at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia today, January 19, at 9:34 am Beijing Time (January 19, 01:34 UTC; January 18, 8:34 pm EST).

Launched on April 24, 2025 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, the spacecraft delivered the three-man Shenzhou-20 crew to Tiangong for a six-month tour of duty. Their replacements arrived on Shenzhou-21 on October 31, but five days later as the Shenzhou-20 crew prepared to return home, they observed cracks in the capsule’s “viewport window” apparently due to impact from a piece of space debris.

Chinese space authorities decided the capsule was unsafe and directed the Shenzhou-20 crew to return to Earth in Shenzhou-21’s capsule even though that meant the Shenzhou-21 crew wouldn’t have an escape route until a new capsule arrived. The Shenzhou-20 crew landed on November 14 in Shenzhou-21 while their damaged spacecraft remained docked to the space station.

Fortunately, China keeps a CZ-2F rocket and Shenzhou capsule at the Jiuquan launch site ready to go — a “rolling backup” — exactly for this type of contingency. In just under three weeks, they were able to launch Shenzhou-22 on November 25 Beijing Time (November 24 EST). No people were aboard, but it was full of food and other supplies as well as a quickly developed “window crack treatment.”

On December 9, taikonauts Zhang Lu and Wu Fei performed a spacewalk to inspect and photograph Shenzhou-20’s window. Xinhua said today they later installed the window crack treatment inside Shenzhou-20, “effectively enhancing the capsule’s thermal protection and sealing capabilities for the return journey.”

Apparently it worked. The report today is that items inside the capsule were “in good condition” when it was opened.  Among them was a spacesuit that had been used for 20 spacewalks within four years.  Zhang Lu, who is aboard Tiangong  now on his second mission, noted he wore the spacesuit himself for four spacewalks as part of the 2022-2023 Shenzhou-15 crew.  New spacesuits were delivered to the space station in July which Zhang Lu and Wu Fei wore during the December spacewalk.

Zhang Lu, Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang continue their work aboard Tiangong. They will be replaced by Shenzhou-23 in due course.

China has been rotating crews on Tiangong roughly every six months since 2022 similar to the crew rotation schedule on the U.S.-Russian-Japanese-European-Canadian International Space Station. The ISS just celebrated 25 years of permanent occupancy by international crews.

Meanwhile a new “rolling backup” is getting into place at Jiuquan in case there’s another emergency. The Shenzhou-23 spacecraft just arrived and a CZ-2F rocket soon will. Absent an emergency, they’ll launch the next Tiangong crew later this year.