“The return capsule of the Shenzhou-21 spaceship, carrying the Shenzhou-20 astronauts Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie, touched down at the Dongfeng landing site in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Friday,” says Chinese Communist state media outlet Xinhua in a Friday brief headlined “Shenzhou-20 crew return mission a complete success.”
It was pretty successful if we’re talking strictly in terms of whether the three guys made it back to Earth alive. They probably did… nine days after they had been scheduled to do so. Space.com reports that the taikonauts – who had spent six months in the Chinese orbiter – had something of a scare last week when an unidentified piece of debris struck the craft. The American site does cite Chinese state media on the incident, so it’s not like Xi’s regime had been covering it up in real-time but it would seem that now that it’s over and done they want to memory-hole it with “successful.”