China’s Shenzhou-21 Crew Returns to Earth

China’s three-man Shenzhou-21 (SZ-21) crew returned to Earth today after 210 days aboard the Tiangong space station. They landed not in the SZ-21 spacecraft, however, but SZ-22. SZ-22 was launched with no one aboard because the SZ-20 spacecraft was damaged by space debris and unsafe to bring the SZ-20 crew home. They had to use SZ-21’s spacecraft.  China keeps a rocket and spacecraft ready at the launch site for emergencies like this, enabling them to quickly launch SZ-22 to serve as SZ-21’s safe haven and ride home. The SZ-23 crew is now aboard Tiangong continuing the crew handovers that began at the end of 2022.

Photos posted by China’s official news agency Xinhua show the three smiling taikonauts being helped out of the Shenzhou-22 capsule after landing at the Dongfeng landing site in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region at 8:11 am EDT (8:11 pm Beijing Time).

Commander Zhang Lu, flight engineer Wu Fei,  and payload specialist Zhang Hongzhang launched on October 31, 2025 and were the first to use a fast-track route to Tiangong, docking just three-and-a-half hours later.

After the discovery of the cracked viewpoint window on SZ-20 and the departure of that crew in SZ-21’s spacecraft on November 14, 2025 EST, the SZ-21 crew spent about 11 days on Tiangong with no safe haven until the replacement SZ-22 arrived. The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) had emergency “rolling backup” plans in place for such a contingency, however, with a backup rocket and spacecraft at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center ready to go. The uncrewed SZ-22 launched on November 24, 2025 EST (November 25 Beijing Time), just 20 days after the cracked window was discovered. In a thread on X, space journalist Andrew Jones summarized a report from China’s CCTV chronicling what happened over those 20 days.

Zhang Lu and Wu Fei conducted three spacewalks, with Zhang setting a new Chinese spacewalk record of seven — four on SZ-15 and three this time.

On the first spacewalk, they inspected and photographed SZ-20’s cracked window, later installing a protective cover that was delivered on SZ-22 from inside the spacecraft. SZ-20 then returned to Earth without a crew on January 19, 2026 EST and Xinhua reported that items inside the capsule, including a spacesuit Zhang wore during his SZ-15 spacewalks, were in good condition.

Since December 2022, China has been rotating Tiangong crews on roughly 6-month schedules similar to the U.S.-Russian-European-Japanese-Canadian International Space Station. The ISS recently exceeded 25 years of continuous occupancy.

SZ-23 launched on Sunday to replace SZ-21. Their viewport window has enhanced protection.