China's first crewed spacecraft to be ruled unfit to fly in mid-mission will be sent back to Earth for experts to assess the damage it sustained more closely, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Monday.

On November 5, the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft was meant to bring its crew back to China just after finishing a six-month stay aboard Beijing's permanently inhabited space station Tiangong.

The vessel's crew was forced to return to Earth in a different spaceship nine days later, temporarily leaving Tiangong and its remaining trio of resident astronauts without a flightworthy vessel.

China's space-industrial complex raced to remove that risk by working overtime to execute its first emergency launch mission on November 25, just 20 days after the initial delay was announced.

But the future of th

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