chinese astronauts

The station has now expanded to its maximum size, with three modules and three spacecraft attached for a total mass of nearly 100 tons. Three Chinese astronauts docked early Wednesday with their country's space station, where they will overlap for several days with the three-member crew already onboard and expand the facility to its maximum size. Docking with the Tiangong station came at 5:42 a.m. Wednesday, about 6 1/2 hours after the Shenzhou-15 spaceship blasted off atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket from the…

Three Chinese astronauts returned to earth on Friday after a 90-day visit to an unfinished space station in the country's first crewed mission since 2016.In a small return capsule, the three men - Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo - landed safely in the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia in the north of China at 1:34 pm, state media reported.The Shenzhou-12 mission was the first of four crewed missions planned for 2021-2022 as China assembles its first permanent space station. The process requires 11 missions,…