Chinas first crewed spacecraft deemed unsafe to fly during a mission will be brought back to Earth for a thorough examination, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Monday.
The Shenzhou-20 spacecraft was scheduled to return its crew to China on November 5 after a six-month mission aboard the permanently inhabited Tiangong space station. However, shortly before departure, astronauts discovered a crack in the return capsules window, forcing an unprecedented postponement within Chinas human spaceflight program.
Nine days later, the crew returned aboard a different spacecraft, temporarily leaving Tiangong with only its remaining three astronauts and no operational return vehicle.
Chinas space industry quickly worked to eliminate this safety gap, conducting its first emergency launch mission on November 25just 20 days after the original delay.
Until Mondays televised report, the fate of the damaged Shenzhou-20 capsule, still docked at the station, had remained uncertain.
Ji Qiming, spokesperson for the China Manned Space Agency, told CCTV that Shenzhou-20 will return to Earth without a crew, noting that the uncrewed descent will allow engineers to gather the most accurate experimental data.
Jia Shijin, one of the spacecrafts designers, shared new insights into the window damage. According to Jia, preliminary assessments indicate that a piece of space debris smaller than one millimetre struck the capsule at extremely high velocity, creating a crack over one centimetre long. Since the damage cannot be examined directly in orbit, specialists will investigate it in detail once the capsule is back on Earth.
Jia added that the decision to delay the original return mission stemmed from concerns that the crack could expand, potentially causing a loss of cabin pressure and allowing high-speed gas to enter the spacecraftconditions that could rapidly compromise life-support systems and endanger the crew.