China has begun preparations to send a Shenzhou spacecraft to its permanently inhabited space station ahead of schedule, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Saturday.

Shenzhou-22 is being sent without anyone on board to the Tiangong space station six months ahead of its planned launch in order to put China's manned space programme back on track.

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The Shenzhou missions have run like clockwork since 2021 until ten days ago when Shenzhou-20 was damaged while docked at Tiangong, forcing its three-person crew to stay an extra nine days along with another trio of astronauts.

On Friday, the Shenzhou-20 crew boarded the Shenzhou-21 spacecraft and successfully retu

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