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November 14, 2025<\/p>\n
1 min read<\/p>\n
Stranded Chinese Astronauts Return to Earth, but Space Junk Threats Remain<\/p>\n
The Shenzhou 20 spacecraft was too damaged to bring its crew home from China\u2019s Tiangong space station. Those astronauts have now returned via the Shenzhou 21 craft, leaving its crew without a return ride until the nation sends a new spacecraft to the station<\/p>\n
By Humberto Basilio edited by Claire Cameron<\/span><\/p>\n Astronauts for China’s Shenzhou-20 space mission Wang Jie, Chen Zhongrui and Chen Dong wave before boarding a bus to take them to the Shenzhou-20 spaceship on April 24, 2025.<\/p>\n Pedro Pardo\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n Three Chinese astronauts who had been stranded for days in space after a suspected piece of space junk hit their spacecraft are back on Earth, the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSE) announced on Friday.<\/p>\n The agency also revealed that it had found tiny cracks in one of the windows of the crew\u2019s Shenzou 20 return capsule\u2014rendering it unusable.<\/p>\n The astronauts instead returned onboard the Shenzhou 21 spacecraft, which had originally been used by Shenzou 20\u2019s replacement crew. China had planned to keep the Shenzhou 21 capsule docked at its Tiangong space station to return those astronauts at the end of their mission, which is currently slated for April 2026.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very glad that they got home, but it is a bit disconcerting that the replacement crew apparently does not have a vehicle to come back to Earth,\u201d says Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability at the Colorado-based nonprofit Secure World Foundation.<\/p>\n CMSE told the Chinese news agency Xinhua that a new spacecraft, Shenzhou 22, will be launched at an \u201cappropriate time in the future,\u201d meaning that Tiangong\u2019s remaining three-person crew currently has no means of returning to Earth in the event of an emergency.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear what kind of debris struck Shenzhou 20, but Samson speculated that it was likely tiny\u2014perhaps between one and 10 centimeters in diameter\u2014which is too small for astronomers to track.<\/p>\n \u201cThis again underlines the argument for not deliberately creating debris in orbit,\u201d Samson said.<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. 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I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" November 14, 2025 1 min read Stranded Chinese Astronauts Return to Earth, but Space Junk Threats Remain The Shenzhou 20 spacecraft was too damaged to bring its crew home from China\u2019s Tiangong space station. Those astronauts have now returned via the Shenzhou 21 craft, leaving its crew without a return ride until the nation sends<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[2724,4261,589,15343,3665,1007,1101,15712,1755],"class_list":{"0":"post-33727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-astronauts","9":"tag-chinese","10":"tag-earth","11":"tag-junk","12":"tag-remain","13":"tag-return","14":"tag-space","15":"tag-stranded","16":"tag-threats"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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