Stranded Chinese Astronauts Return to Earth, but Space Junk Threats Remain
November 14, 2025
1 min reading
Stranded Chinese astronauts return to Earth, but space debris threats remain
THE Shenzhou 20 The spacecraft was too damaged to bring its crew back from China’s Tiangong space station. These astronauts have now returned via the Shenzhou 21 spaceship, leaving its crew with no return until the nation sends a new spaceship to the station
Astronauts from China’s Shenzhou-20 space mission, Wang Jie, Chen Zhongrui and Chen Dong, salute before boarding a bus to take them to the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft, April 24, 2025.
Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images
Three Chinese astronauts, stranded for several days in space after a suspected piece of space debris hit their spacecraft, are back on Earth, the Chinese Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSE) announced on Friday.
The agency also revealed that it discovered tiny cracks in one of the windows of the crew’s boat. Shenzou20 return capsule, rendering it unusable.
The astronauts returned to the Shenzhou 21 spacecraft, which had initially been used by Shenzou20The replacement crew. China had planned to keep the Shenzhou 21 capsule docked with its Tiangong space station to bring these astronauts back at the end of their mission, currently scheduled for April 2026.
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“I’m very happy that they returned home, but it’s a little disconcerting that the replacement crew apparently doesn’t have a vehicle to return to Earth,” says Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation, a Colorado-based nonprofit.
CMSE told China’s Xinhua news agency that a new spacecraft, Shenzhou 22, will be launched at an “appropriate time in the future”, meaning that the remaining three people of the Tiangong crew currently have no way to return to Earth in the event of an emergency.
It’s unclear exactly what type of debris hit Shenzhou 20but Samson speculated that it was probably tiny – perhaps between one and 10 centimeters in diameter – which is too small for astronomers to track.
“This again highlights the argument for not deliberately creating debris in orbit,” Samson said.
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