No trip to space can be counted a success unless you make it safely back to Earth. That’s a lesson American astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams learned when their intended eight-day stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2024 wound up lasting nine months, due to thruster problems in their Boeing Starliner spacecraft that left them without a ride home. And it’s a lesson that was learned anew this week by the taikonauts—Chinese astronauts—Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui, and Wang Jie. The trio arrived at China’s Tiangong Space Station aboard their Shenzhou-20 spacecraft on April 24, and were set to come home on Nov. 5, handing the keys to the station over to the three-person crew of Shenzhou-21, who arrived on Oct. 31 .

But that was not to be. Not long before Shenzhou-20

See Full Page