A spacecraft carrying Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo touched down safely in the Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia on September 17 2021, at 1:34 a.m. EDT (0534 GMT; 1:34 p.m. Beijing time) bringing the historic Shenzhou 12 mission to an end.
Shenzhou 12 launched on June 16 and arrived seven hours later at Tianhe ("Harmony of the Heavens"), the core module of China's Earth-orbiting space station. The Shenzhou 12 crew, commanded by Nie, spent 90 days aboard Tianhe, staying aloft about three times longer than any previous Chinese crewed spaceflight.
Shenzhou 12's return to Earth was a multiday affair. The spacecraft detached from Tianhe Wednesday (Sept. 15) at 8:56 p.m. EDT (0056 GMT on Sept. 16), according to a statement released by the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO). Shenzhou 12 then performed a rendezvous test with Tianhe, which was complete by 1:38 a.m. EDT (0538 GMT) Thursday (Sept. 16), CMSEO officials said in another update.
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