Chinese astronauts returned to Earth after being in space for six months

BEIJING: China’s Shenzhou-17 spacecraft returned to Earth on Tuesday carrying three astronauts, completing a six-month mission on the country’s orbiting space station. The trio, Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengji and Jiang Xinlin, 6:00 p.m. It landed at the Dongfeng site in the Gobi Desert in northern China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region shortly before 1000 GMT. This comes about four days after the Shenzhou-18 mission reached the station with a three-member replacement crew. China built its own space station after being kicked out of the International Space Station, mainly due to the two geopolitical rivals. There was American concern over the Chinese military’s complete control over the space program amid increasing competition in technology. This year, the Chinese station is scheduled for two cargo spacecraft missions and two manned spaceflight missions. China’s ambitious space program aims to send astronauts to the Moon by 2030, as well as bring back samples from Mars around the same year And to launch three lunar probe missions in the next four years.