: [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION November 17, 2025: This story incorrectly refers to Georgia Tech as Georgia Tech University. Its official name is the Georgia Institute of Technology.]
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Now from airplanes to outer space. We have news of three Chinese astronauts who are finally back on Earth. They'd had to extend their stay on China's space station by more than a week due to space debris hitting and damaging their spacecraft. NPR's Emily Feng reports on their journey home.
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: Everything for the Shenzhou 20 mission - China's 20th crewed mission to space - was going smoothly.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: The three astronauts took off from China's Gansu Province this past April.
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FENG: They then spent six months on board China's space station, conducting experiments on topics like observing how mice reproduce in space and barbecuing Chinese food in low gravity. And when the next crew rotated on board about two weeks ago...
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: ...They welcomed the new astronauts on board. But then several days later, a piece of space debris cracked a port window of the outgoing Shenzhou 20, the craft that was going to bring the first three astronauts home, delaying their trip. Lincoln Hines researches the politics of outer space at Georgia Tech University, and he says space debris is a real danger because it travels at high speeds.
LINCOLN HINES: We're talking about speeds of around 18,000 miles per hour. Kind of a frame of reference for this is that it's - this is about seven times the speed of a bullet.
FENG: And there's a lot more space debris these days - everything from a fleck of paint to a loose screw to the thousands of mini satellites that Chinese and American companies are launching. China sent its first crewed mission to space in 2003, and in the more than two decades since, it has made big strides in outer space exploration. Last month, it said it was on track to also send a person to the moon by 2030. But all that could be endangered by lethal space debris.
HINES: And the concern is that over time, it is going to be so congested with this debris that we aren't going to actually be able to use these critical orbits.
FENG: In the end, the three astronauts came back to Earth using the return spacecraft belonging to the crew that just switched them out. And on Friday, under the glow of a mid-afternoon sun...
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: ...They landed in the flat, unsparing planes of the Inner Mongolia region in China. In total, the astronauts spent 204 days in orbit. That is a record for China's space program. Emily Feng, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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