Three Chinese astronauts returned safely to Earth on Tuesday, after five months in orbit in the Tiangong space station, according to Chinese television which described the mission as a “complete success”.
Jing Haipeng, Zhu Yangzhu and Gui Haichao landed at the Dongfeng site in China at 8:11 a.m. (0011 GMT), according to CCTV.
Television images showed their capsule landing by parachute in the Gobi desert (northwest), surrounded by a thick cloud of orange dust.
“On-site medical monitoring and staff have confirmed that the astronauts… are in good health,” CCTV said.
“The Shenzhou-16 mission was a complete success,” she added.
The three men blasted off into space at the end of May and were in orbit for 154 days, spending most of their time on scientific experiments.
They also carried out a spacewalk lasting almost eight hours.
A new team, the youngest sent by China so far, replaced them last week, as part of the Shenzhou-17 mission.
With an average age of 38 years (compared to 42 years for the previous crew), Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie and Jiang Xinlin will carry out “space science and application payload tests”, according to the National Space Agency.
They will also carry out maintenance work to repair minor damage caused to the station by space debris.
The astronauts’ stay on Tiangong is expected to last six months.
This experience is valuable for the Asian giant, which aims to send a Chinese person to the Moon by 2030, a major objective of a space program which has been progressing steadily for several decades.
For several decades, Beijing has invested billions of euros in its space program led by the army, which has enabled it to make up most of its gap with the Americans and the Russians.
China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003, and its Tiangong space station has been fully operational since late 2022.