The Shenzhou 21 trio came back to Earth on Friday after 210 days aboard the Tiangong space station, a new endurance record for a Chinese crewed flight. Commander Zhang Lu, Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang touched down at the Dongfeng Landing Site in Inner Mongolia at 8:11 a.m. EDT (1211 GMT), reported in good health by the recovery team on scene.
They did not come home in the spacecraft they launched on. Shenzhou 21 lifted off Oct. 31, 2025 to relieve the Shenzhou 20 crew. When the Shenzhou 20 astronauts went to inspect their return vehicle in early November, they found a crack in a capsule window, attributed to a likely micrometeoroid or orbital debris strike. The fix the China Manned Space Agency settled on was a swap. The Shenzhou 20 crew came home in November on Shenzhou 21’s vehicle, the one Zhang Lu’s crew had just arrived in, and the new arrivals were left waiting for the Shenzhou 22 capsule to fly up and become their ride. The Shenzhou 22 vehicle launched uncrewed earlier this month and is what carried Friday’s three astronauts back through entry interface.
The record itself, 210 days, edges past the 192-day mark set by the Shenzhou 19 crew last year and brings China’s longest-duration figure within sight of routine ISS expedition lengths. China’s broader plan, telegraphed when Shenzhou 23 launched May 24, is to push one of the new arrivals to a full year on station, the agency’s first attempt at a year-class mission. Friday’s clean entry, parachute, and landing matter most because they close out the swap procedure end-to-end on operational hardware. The system the agency described in writing last November now exists as flown experience.
What to watch: CMSA’s debris assessment on the cracked Shenzhou 20 capsule, which has implications for shielding on the year-long Shenzhou 23 stay, and the agency’s expected naming of which Shenzhou 23 crewmember draws the extended assignment.