On April 30th, according to the China Manned Space Engineering Office, the Shenzhou-17 manned spacecraft has successfully separated from the space station.
Next, under ground command control, it will re-enter and land at the Dongfeng landing site.
Recently, the crew of Shenzhou 17 and Shenzhou 18 spacecraft held a handover ceremony in orbit, with the two crews passing the keys to the Chinese space station.
It is reported that the three astronauts of the Shenzhou 17 crew, Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie, and Jiang Xinlin, entered the Chinese space station on October 26, 2023, and have been in orbit for approximately 6 months.
During this time, Shenzhou 17 welcomed the Tianzhou 7 cargo spacecraft, and the crew completed two spacewalk activities.
During the second extravehicular activity on March 2nd this year, astronauts successfully completed their first maintenance task on the spacecraft's exterior facilities in orbit.
During the Shenzhou-17 mission in orbit, a total of 84 space applications experiments were conducted, resulting in over 60 different types of more than 200 samples in various fields such as space life sciences and biotechnology, aerospace medicine, and space materials science.
In close collaboration with ground-based researchers, the crew completed the retrieval of the first batch of exposed experimental materials outside the spacecraft. This initial set of exposed materials includes both non-metallic and metallic items, totaling 407 pieces.
These samples were disassembled and stored by the astronauts, returning to Earth along with the astronauts and the Shenzhou spacecraft for further research by scientists on the ground.
