China's Shenzhou-20 Astronauts Enter Tiangong Space Station, Meet Shenzhou-19 Crew

Shenzhou-20 Astronauts Enter China's Tiangong Space Station, Meet Shenzhou-19

The three astronauts of China's Shenzhou-20 spaceflight mission on April 25, 2025, entered the Tiangong space station and met with the Shenzhou-19 mission crew on board, starting a new round of in-orbit crew handover. The Shenzhou-20 spaceship, with Commander Chen Dong and crew members Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie aboard, docked with the space station's core Tianhe module at 23:49 Thursday (Beijing Time).

At 01:17 Friday (Beijing Time), the Shenzhou-19 crew opened the hatch and greeted the new arrivals. The two teams took group photos and sent messages to ground staff, while the commanders of the two space missions exchanged greetings.

"On behalf of the Shenzhou-19 crew, I welcome all of you to the Chinese space station. Chen Dong and I previously conducted the Shenzhou-14 mission together. This time, we can work together on the space station again, I feel really happy and very lucky. Congratulations to Chen Dong on his return to the Chinese space station and to [Chen] Zhongrui and Wang Jie on fulfilling their space dream. Let's build our space home together in the coming days," said Cai Xuzhe, commander of the Shenzhou-19 crew.

"I feel very warm in my heart coming to our space home again. It feels like I'm back to the familiar scene where I carried out the Shenzhou-14 mission with Cai Xuzhe. And I also feel very warm seeing [Song] Lingdong and [Wang] Haoze again. [The distance between us] used to be as far as 400 kilometers, but today we are face to face. I'm very happy. We were launched on China Space Day to meet with you, so we are very lucky and proud. We will have a very short time together on the station, so let's cherish it and work hard together to complete the subsequent tasks well," said Chen Dong, commander of the Shenzhou-20 mission.

Space station newcomers in the Shenzhou-20 crew thanked their predecessors for their hard work over the past six months and said they were looking forward to the handover.

China launched the Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft on April 24, 2025, sending three astronauts to its orbiting space station for a six-month mission. The spacecraft, atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket, blasted off at 17:17 (Beijing Time) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China.

Shenzhou-20 is the 35th flight mission of China's crewed space program, and the fifth crewed mission during the application and development stage of China's space station.

The crew is scheduled to return to the Dongfeng landing site in north China in late October this year.

Video Credit: CCTV
Duration: 1 minute, 15 seconds
Release Date: April 24, 2025

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