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The Shenzhou 21 astronaut mission will launch to China’s Tiangong space station on October 31, 2025. | Credit: CCTV
If an emergency situation arises aboard China’s Tiangong space station in the coming days, its three astronauts could be in trouble.
This trio – members of the Shenzhou 21 mission – arrived at Tiangong on October 31 for a six-month stay. But their planned return is already over. On Thursday evening (November 13), the Shenzhou 21 spacecraft carried three different astronauts away from the station – members of the Shenzhou 20 mission, whose own vehicle was deemed unfit to return people to Earth after being damaged by space debris strike.
So the Shenzhou 21 astronauts are currently living in Tiangong without a reliable lifeboat. The good news is that this somewhat risky situation should be very temporary.
China maintains Long March 2F rocket and Shenzhou spacecraft “in near-ready state” at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on principle during crewed missions, as planned Andrew Jones of SpaceNews noted. If something goes wrong at Tiangong, this emergency lifeboat can be launched to the station only 8.5 days later.
This countdown has likely already begun for the Shenzhou 21 crew, as the lack of a safe return home is definitely considered a possibility.
Indeed, Chinese space officials I already said that the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft will be launched towards Tiangong (presumably without anyone on board). They did not give a timetable, saying only that the takeoff would take place “at an appropriate time in the future.”
But we can assume that launch day is near; the nation surely doesn’t want to expose its astronauts to more risk than necessary, and every day spent in orbit without a lifeboat is a risk.
The fate of the Shenzhou 21 astronauts is reminiscent of the experience of NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who flew to the International Space Station (ISS) in June 2024 for the very first crewed mission of the Boeing Starliner capsule.
Starliner suffered helium leaks and propellant problems on its way up, and NASA finally decided to return the spacecraft to Earth without a crew. It happened without incident in September 2024.
Wilmore and Williams, meanwhile, continued to live on the ISS until last March, turning a planned 10-day mission into a affair of almost nine months. They finally came home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule with fellow NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexandr Gorbunov.
But the Shenzhou 21 astronauts are currently in a more precarious situation than Wilmore and Williams ever were. There were always non-Starliner lifeboats docked at the ISS during NASA astronauts’ orbital stay, and they could have stuck in one of these machines for a cramped return home if something had gone horribly wrong on the ISS.
This does not appear to be an option for Tiangong’s current residents: the Shenzhou 20 spacecraft, the only crew-capable vehicle docked to the station at the moment, has tiny cracks in one of its windows from the impact of debris.
“The Shenzhou-20 spacecraft does not meet the requirements for the safe return of astronauts and will remain in orbit to continue relevant experiments,” the Xinhua news newspaper said. reported Thursdayciting information from China’s Human Space Mission Agency.
Shenzhou 21 is the 10th crewed mission to Tiangong, a three-module station with a mass about 20 percent larger than that of the ISS.
The mission is made up of Commander Zhang Lu, 48, who also flew on Shenzhou 15 in 2022, and two spaceflight recruits, Zhang Hongzhang and Wu Fei. Wu has the distinction of being the youngest member of the Chinese astronaut corps.
