By Eduardo Baptista
BEIJING (Reuters) -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.
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 returned to Earth, leaving the newly arrived trio of astronauts who had arrived two weeks ago without a vessel that could take them home in the event of an emergency.
Shenzhou-22 is being sent ahead of schedule to plug this security risk and allow the Shenzhou-21 crew to return to Earth around April 2026, once they complete their half-year shift.
“Preparations for the Shenzhou-22 mission have commenced. The spacecraft will carry a full cargo load, including astronaut provisions and equipment for the space station,” CCTV reported.
Tiangong has a maximum capacity of six crew, but this can only be temporarily sustained as the facility is designed to host three astronauts for six months.
China has not yet announced what will happen to the damaged Shenzhou-20, which is suspected to have been hit by space debris, slightly cracking the window of the its return capsule.
Experts have suggested the vessel could be undocked from Tiangong and deorbited over the Pacific.
(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista; Editing by Alexander Smith)
