China's Shenzhou-9 and Crew Return to Earth

By Nancy Atkinson - June 29, 2012 at 2:55 AM UTC | Space Exploration
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China's Shenzhou-9 spacecraft and its three-member crew has returned to Earth with a jarring, rolling ground landing in Inner Mongolia at 10:05 local time (02:05 GMT). While in space, the crew successfully carried out their 13-day mission, accomplishing a manual docking with the Tiangong-1 laboratory module and performing a series of experiments. The crew included the first Chinese woman in space, 33-year-old female fighter pilot Liu Yang, along with commander Jing Haipeng, and Liu Wang.

The China National Space Agency said the mission was a key step towards their goal of building a space station by 2020.

The crew launched on June 16, docked with the space laboratory in an automated fashion on June 18 and lived and worked in the module for several days doing medical experiments along with studies of live butterflies, butterfly eggs and pupae. Later, they undocked and then did a manual docking, an important test of the procedure which would be used in the event of a failure with the automated system. While the US and Russia have done manual dockings since the 1960's, it is still regarded as a difficult maneuver, bringing two orbiting vessels traveling at thousands of kilometers an hour close together, and then linking them.

The 8.5 ton Tiangong 1 is designed to stay in space for at least 2 years and support crews of up to three astronauts for short duration stays. One more manned mission is planned to visit, Shenzhou 10.

The planned new space station will weigh about 60 tons and be about one-sixth the size of the 16-nation International Space Station, and just slightly smaller than NASA's Skylab that was operational in the 1970s.

China launched their first taikonaut into space in 2003, had a two-man mission and in 2005, with three taikonauts flying to space in 2008, a mission that featured the country's first spacewalk.

A white paper released last December outlining China's ambitious space program said the country "will conduct studies on the preliminary plan for a human lunar landing."

Lead image caption:

China's Shenzhou-9 spacecraft lands safely in Siziwang Banner of north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Friday.Wang Jianmin / Xinhua.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com