China’s latest astronaut crew has reached its orbital destination.
The three-person Shenzhou 20 mission arrived at China’s Tiangong space station today (April 24) at 11:49 a.m. EDT (1549 GMT), beginning a six-month stay aboard the outpost.
Their off-Earth chase was brief: Shenzhou 20 launched atop a Long March 2F rocket from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China today at 5:17 a.m. EDT (0917 GMT; 5:17 p.m. Beijing time).
Shenzhou 20 consists of commander Chen Dong, who is on his third spaceflight, and Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie, both of whom are rookies.
The trio are joining the three-person Shenzhou 19 crew aboard Tiangong, though the overlap will be brief: Shenzhou 19 is expected to head back down to Earth on April 29.
Shenzhou 20 is the ninth astronaut mission to reach Tiangong, a T-shaped outpost that’s about 20% as massive as the International Space Station. China finished assembling the three-module Tiangong in October 2022, though the nation’s space officials have said that they may add more modules to it in the future.
Shenzhou 20’s launch and docking came on a big spaceflight anniversary: On April 24, 1990, NASA’s iconic Hubble Space Telescope reached orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery.
Hubble famously deployed with a flawed primary mirror, which made its initial images blurry. But spacewalking astronauts fixed that problem in December 1993. Hubble was maintained and upgraded on four additional servicing missions, which launched in February 1997, December 1999, March 2002 and May 2009.
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