Peking. Three Chinese astronauts landed in a desert area in north China on Sunday after six months working on the construction of the Tiangong station, a symbol of the country’s ambitious space program, state television reported.
The capsule carrying Commander Chen Dong and astronauts Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe touched down in the Gobi desert at about 8:10 pm (1210 GMT), Chinese TV reported.
They were members of the Shenzhou-14 mission, which was launched in June.
The Tiangong station is part of Chinese plans to have a permanent space presence.
China in 2003 became the third government to put an astronaut into orbit on its own, after the former Soviet Union and the United States.
The government has launched robotic probes to the dark side of the Moon and to Mars. In 2020, a probe returned samples from the Moon to Earth for the first time since the 1970s.
A crew of three Chinese astronauts lifted off on Tuesday for the final phase of construction of Tiangong. The third and final station module was attached to the station this month.
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