Most of us like to know there is a spare key or backup ride home. In orbit, that backup is a docked spacecraft, and right now three Chinese astronauts are working without one. Zhang Lu, Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang, the Shenzhou 21 crew, are living on China’s Tiangong space station after their own capsule was used to bring back the earlier Shenzhou 20 team, whose return craft was damaged by suspected space debris and developed small cracks in a window.
The basic picture is clear: the rescue worked, but the new crew currently has no dedicated way home if a serious emergency hits.
How did the Shenzhou 21 crew end up without a return spacecraft?
The story starts with Shenzhou 20. Wang Jie, Chen Zhongrui and commander Chen Dong launched on April 24 for a roughly six-month stay on Tiangong and were scheduled to return to Earth on November 5, shortly after their relief crew arrived. Their replacements, flying Shenzhou 21, lifted off from the Jiuquan launch center in China’s Gobi Desert on October 31 atop a Long March 2F rocket and docked with the station hours later for what was meant to be a routine handover.
During that overlap, controllers reported that a suspected piece of space junk had hit the Shenzhou 20 return capsule while it was docked and tests found tiny cracks in a viewing window. Chinese authorities said the ship no longer met safety requirements for bringing astronauts back through the atmosphere, so the outgoing crew was reassigned to the fresh Shenzhou 21 vehicle instead of waiting for a new spacecraft.
On November 14, Shenzhou 21 undocked with the Shenzhou 20 taikonauts – the term many outlets use for Chinese astronauts – on board and landed in Inner Mongolia after 204 days in orbit, setting a new national record and leaving the three Shenzhou 21 astronauts beginning their own six-month stay without their original ride home.
How risky is the situation for the three astronauts on Tiangong?
For now, there is no sign that Zhang, Wu and Zhang are in immediate danger. Official statements and specialist reporting say they are working normally aboard Tiangong and are still expected to complete their mission as planned, so in everyday terms they have lost the spare tire, not the car.
The real concern is the worst-case scenario. If another piece of debris hit the station or a major system failed, the crew would not have a dedicated, undamaged spacecraft ready for a rapid evacuation. China’s space agency has said only that the next ship, Shenzhou 22, will launch uncrewed at a time it considers appropriate, while outside reports point to a possible date around November 24.
Engineers also note that the Shenzhou design has separate modules, so the damaged Shenzhou 20 hardware might still be usable in an emergency if its small, parachute-assisted return capsule is intact. However, that would clearly be a high risk last resort rather than a comfortable plan A.
What can readers do to follow this case and judge similar safety risks?
For people on the ground, three astronauts stuck with no obvious way home sounds like the start of another space disaster movie, but much depends on how we read the available information.
The situation echoes recent extended stays on the International Space Station, when NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore spent about nine months in orbit, and Frank Rubio stayed more than a year, because of spacecraft troubles, although in those cases at least one other return capsule was always docked and ready.
To make sense of situations like this without getting swept up by alarm or by overly soothing headlines, it helps to use a few simple habits:
- Check what space agencies and mission operators are saying.
- Look for clear mentions of backup spacecraft or rescue plans.
- Compare those details with the tone of news reports.
- Watch for follow-up announcements instead of assuming the first version of the story is the final word.
Applied to Tiangong, that means following updates from the China Manned Space Agency (CMS) and trusted international outlets on when Shenzhou 22 is actually launched, whether new debris protection or emergency drills are added, and how officials describe the Shenzhou 21 crew’s status over time.
Closer to home, it is also a reminder that whenever your safety or your money depends on complex technology – from airlines to rail systems – it is worth asking what the backup looks like if the “normal” plan suddenly has to double as someone else’s lifeboat.
