Given the high-risk and high-profile nature of spaceflight, no national space program can afford to take risks when ensuring the safety of its crew during missions. The China National Space Administration announced on Wednesday that the return of Shenzhou-20 from its Tiangong space station has been delayed due to suspected debris impact damage to the spacecraft. The three taikonauts will remain in space without a set alternative return date while the agency assesses the situation.
China’s space agency initially planned for Shenzhou-20 to return on November 5 with a parachute landing in Inner Mongolia, concluding their six-month stay in low Earth orbit. Coincidentally, the mission included spacewalks to install additional shielding onto Tiangong. Shenzhou-21 launched last Friday with the scheduled replacement crew. According to CNN, a televised handover ceremony had already taken place with the taikonauts set to take command.Shenzhou-20 commander Chen Dong said, “We are about to return to Earth, and now I am handing over the hatch key that symbolizes the right to maintain operations on this Chinese space station to you.”
Columbia remains a warning for risking re-entry with a damaged spacecraft
Shenzhou-20’s predicament sounds eerily similar to the events that led up to the Columbia disaster in 2003. During the fateful launch, a piece of foam broke off the Space Shuttle’s external tank and struck the left wing at over 425 miles per hour. The resulting damage to the orbiter’s thermal protection tiles caused Columbia to disintegrate while re-entering the atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts onboard. The disaster grounded the Space Shuttle for two years and highlighted the need for space agencies to be vigilant in their operations to mitigate safety risks.
As crewed spaceflight becomes more frequent, it increases the likelihood of a fault slipping through the cracks and sparking a catastrophe. NASA had its own debacle last year during the crewed test flight of the Boeing Starliner. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were stuck on the International Space Station as engineers on the ground assessed the persistent problems that plagued the spacecraft during launch. Wilmore admitted that enough thrusters failed that he lost full control during the rendezvous with the station. Eventually, NASA sent the Starliner back autonomously while reorganizing a scheduled SpaceX Crew Dragon mission to get Wilmore and Williams home.
