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NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits on the ramp at sunrise before ground tests at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, on July 18, 2025.
NASA test pilot Nils Larson lowers the canopy of the X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft during ground tests at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, on July 18, 2025.
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft taxis across the runway during a low-speed taxi test at U.S. Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, on July 10, 2025. The test marks the start of taxi tests and the last series of ground tests before first flight.
Here you see the X-59 scaled model inside the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) supersonic wind tunnel during critical tests related to sound predictions.
The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst Mission to demonstrate quiet supersonic flight. The aircraft is scheduled to make its first flight later in 2025. NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft has completed taxi tests, marking the first time this one-of-a-kind experimental aircraft has moved under its own power. The aircraft completed its first low-speed taxi test, allowing engineers and flight crews to monitor how it handled moving across the runway under its own power. Taxi tests mark the final major ground test before flight operations begin.
NASA’s Quesst Mission aims to demonstrate quiet supersonic flight by reducing the loud sonic boom to a quieter “thump”. Data gathered during X-59 research flights will be shared with the U.S. and international regulators to inform the establishment of new, data-driven acceptable noise thresholds related to supersonic commercial flight over land.
The X-59’s engine, a modified F414-GE-100, packs 22,000 pounds of thrust. This will enable the X-59 to achieve the desired cruising speed of Mach 1.4 (925 miles per hour) at an altitude of approximately 55,000 feet. It sits in a nontraditional spot–atop the aircraft—to aid in making the X-59 quieter.
The X-59's goal is to help change existing national and international aviation rules that ban commercial supersonic flight over land.
Close-up: Galaxy NGC 4900—A Spiral and a Star in Virgo | Hubble
This NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope picture features a sparkling spiral galaxy paired with a prominent star, both in the constellation Virgo. While the galaxy and the star appear to be close to one another, even overlapping, they are actually a great distance apart. The star, marked with four long diffraction spikes, is in our own galaxy. It is just 7,109 light-years away from Earth. The galaxy, named NGC 4900, lies about 45 million light-years from Earth.
This image combines data from two of Hubble’s instruments: the Advanced Camera for Surveys, installed in 2002 and is still in operation today, and the older Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2—in use from 1993 to 2009. The data used here were taken more than 20 years apart for two different observing programs—a real testament to Hubble’s long scientific lifetime.
Both programs aimed to understand the demise of massive stars. In one, researchers studied the sites of past supernovae, aiming to estimate the masses of the stars that exploded and investigate how supernovae interact with their surroundings. NGC 4900 was selected for study because it hosted a supernova named SN 1999br.
In the other program, researchers laid the groundwork for studying future supernovae by collecting images of more than 150 nearby galaxies. After a supernova is detected in one of these galaxies, researchers can examine these images, searching for a star at the location of the supernova. Identifying a supernova progenitor star in pre-explosion images gives valuable information about how, when and why supernovae occur.
Image Description: A spiral galaxy seen face-on. Broken spiral arms made of blue patches of stars and thin strands of dark dust swirl around the galaxy’s center, forming a broad, circular disc. An extended circular halo surrounds the disc. The center is a brightly-glowing, stubby bar-shaped area in a pale yellow color. A bright star in our own galaxy, with long cross-shaped diffraction spikes, is visible atop the distant galaxy.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. J. Smartt, C. Kilpatrick
Close-up: Spiral Galaxy UGC 11397 in Lyra | Hubble
The light that the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope collected to create this picture reached the telescope after a journey of 250 million years. Its source was the spiral galaxy UGC 11397. It resides in the constellation Lyra (The Lyre). At first glance, UGC 11397 appears to be an average spiral galaxy. It sports two graceful spiral arms that are illuminated by stars and defined by dark, clumpy clouds of dust.
What sets UGC 11397 apart from a typical spiral lies at its center, where a supermassive black hole containing 174 million times the mass of the Sun is growing. As a black hole ensnares gas, dust, and even entire stars from its vicinity, this doomed matter heats up and puts on a fantastic cosmic light show. Material trapped by the black hole emits light from gamma rays to radio waves and can brighten and fade without warning. However, in galaxies like UGC 11397, thick clouds of dust hide much of this energetic activity from view in optical light. Despite this, UGC 11397's actively growing black hole was revealed through its bright X-ray emission—high-energy light that can pierce the surrounding dust. This led astronomers to classify it as a Type 2 Seyfert galaxy, a category used for active galaxies whose central regions are hidden from view in visible light by a doughnut-shaped cloud of dust and gas.
Using Hubble, researchers will study hundreds of galaxies that, like UGC 11397, harbor a supermassive black hole that is gaining mass. The Hubble observations will help researchers weigh nearby supermassive black holes, understand how black holes grew early in the Universe’s history, and even study how stars form in the extreme environment found at the very center of a galaxy.
Image Description: A spiral galaxy seen at an angle that gives it an oval shape. It has two spiral arms that curl out from the center. They start narrow but broaden out as they wrap around the galaxy before merging into a faint halo. The galaxy’s disc is golden in the center with a bright core, and pale blue outside that. A swirl of dark dust strands and speckled blue star-forming regions follow the arms through the disc.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth, N. Bartmann (ESA/Hubble)
Close-up: Galaxy Cluster Abell 209 in Cetus | Hubble Space Telescope
A massive, spacetime-warping cluster of galaxies is the setting of this NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope picture. The galaxy cluster in question is Abell 209. It is located 2.8 billion light-years away in the constellation Cetus (The Whale).
This Hubble image of Abell 209 shows more than a hundred galaxies, but there is more to this cluster than even Hubble’s discerning eye can see. Abell 209’s galaxies are separated by millions of light-years, and the seemingly empty space between the galaxies is actually filled with hot, diffuse gas that can be spotted only at X-ray wavelengths. An even more elusive occupant of this galaxy cluster is dark matter: a form of matter that does not interact with light. The Universe is understood to be comprised of 5% normal matter, 25% dark matter, and 70% dark energy
Hubble observations like the ones used to create this image can help astronomers answer fundamental questions about our Universe, including mysteries surrounding dark matter and dark energy. These investigations leverage the immense mass of a galaxy cluster. This can bend the fabric of spacetime itself and create warped and magnified images of background galaxies and stars in a process called gravitational lensing.
While this image lacks the dramatic rings that gravitational lensing can sometimes create, Abell 209 still shows subtle signs of lensing at work, in the form of streaky, slightly curved galaxies within the cluster’s golden glow. By measuring the distortion of these galaxies, astronomers can map the distribution of mass within the cluster, illuminating the underlying cloud of dark matter. This information, which Hubble’s fine resolution and sensitive instruments help to provide, is critical for testing theories of how our Universe has evolved.
Image Description: A cluster of distant, mainly elliptical galaxies. They appear as brightly shining points radiating golden light that each take the shape of a smooth, featureless oval. They crowd around one that is extremely large and bright. A few spiral galaxies of comparable size appear too, bluer in color and with unique shapes. Of the other, more small and distant galaxies covering the scene, a few are warped into long lines.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Postman, P. Kelly, N. Bartmann (ESA/Hubble)
Astrophotographer John Chumack: "Sometimes the northern lights occur overhead when it is still daylight, but because of the bright blue sky when the Sun is up, we do not see them. However, I was able to capture this charming daylight aurora outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, on March 22, 2025. The Sun had just set, and so the sky was just dark enough to detect it with the human eye."
"Note that the Andromeda Galaxy (our sister galaxy) is visible on the left center edge of the frame. At approximately 2.2 million light years away, it is considered the furthest object the human eye can see without optical aid."
Photo Details: Canon DSLR camera; 16-35mm lens set to 25mm; F2.8; ISO 3200; 8 seconds exposure.
Auroras happen when charged particles from the Sun interact with Earth's magnetic field, creating dazzling light shows in the sky. The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, occurs in an upper layer of Earth’s atmosphere called the ionosphere.
Alaska is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is considered to be the northernmost, westernmost, and easternmost state in the United States. It borders the Canadian territory of the Yukon and the province of British Columbia to the east. It shares a western maritime border in the Bering Strait with Russia. The Chukchi and Beaufort Seas of the Arctic Ocean lie to the north, and the Pacific Ocean lies to the south.
Image Credit: John Chumack Text Credit: John Chumack John's website: https://www.galacticimages.com Capture Location: Fairbanks, Alaska Coordinates: 64.8401, -147.7200 Release Date: Aug. 18, 2025
Building a New Milky Way Spectator: The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) | ESO
This picture shows the Milky Way galaxy flowing over the European Southern Observatory’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). As the light of the Milky Way band appears to pour into the ELT, the enormous cranes around it seem to do the same while they further advance the telescope. Once the assembly is complete, the soon-to-be largest telescope in the world will be breaking down the light above in unparalleled detail.
The very bright and orange patch in the Milky Way right above the open dome is the core of our galaxy, with its filamentary dark clouds of gas and dust. The stars in the Milky Way center look redder partly because they are older and partly because dust reddens them, similar to how particles in our atmosphere make the Sun look red at sunrise or sunset.
Focusing back down on Earth, the ELT will scrutinize the pristine night sky above the Chilean Atacama Desert with unprecedented precision. It will help us learn more about the close environment of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. It will analyze the atmospheres of exoplanets, answer questions about the births and deaths of stars we yet cannot even begin to ask, and explore how galaxies form and evolve, among many other exciting questions. We eagerly await the mysteries of the cosmos the world’s biggest eye on the sky will unveil.
The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is a massive building. It is almost as tall as London's Big Ben clock tower and larger than Rome's Colosseum. The construction materials used for the ELT include: 10,000 tonnes of steel, 30 million bolts or 500 km of cables.
The ELT stands at Cerro Armazones in Chile's Atacama Desert. Altitude: 3,046 meters Planned year of technical first light: 2027
Image Description: This image shows the open metallic dome of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) at the center of the picture taking up the lower half of the frame. At the top, like a river the Milky Way band horizontally pours into the ELT. The construction site of the ELT is surrounded by cranes, while the Milky Way lights up the sky in various colors. One patch of the Milky Way shines the brightest, the center of the galaxy.
Credit: C. Letelier/ESO Release Date: Aug. 18, 2025
A Noteworthy Nearby Spiral Galaxy in Hydra: NGC 2835| Hubble
This NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope picture offers a closeup of a nearby spiral galaxy. The subject is NGC 2835. It lies 35 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra (The Water Snake). Regions of this galaxy are bright in a wavelength of red light called H-alpha emission. It can be seen along NGC 2835’s spiral arms, where dozens of bright pink nebulae appear like flowers in bloom. Astronomers are interested in H-alpha light because it signals the presence of several types of nebulae that arise during stages of a star’s life. Newborn massive stars create nebulae called H II regions that are particularly brilliant sources of H-alpha light, while dying stars can leave behind supernova remnants or planetary nebulae that can also be identified by their H-alpha emission.
By using Hubble’s sensitive instruments to survey 19 nearby galaxies, researchers aim to identify more than 50,000 nebulae. These observations will help to explain how stars affect their birth neighborhoods through intense starlight and winds.
Image Description: A spiral galaxy seen face-on. Its center is a bright glowing yellow. The galaxy’s spiral arms contain sparkling blue stars, pink spots of star formation, and dark threads of dust that follow the arms.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Chandar, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST team Release Date: Aug. 18, 2025
What kind of clouds are these? Although their cause is presently unknown, such unusual atmospheric structures, as menacing as they might seem, do not appear to be harbingers of meteorological doom. Formally recognized as a distinct cloud type only last year, asperitas clouds can be stunning in appearance, unusual in occurrence, and are relatively unstudied. Whereas most low cloud decks are flat bottomed, asperitas clouds appear to have significant vertical structure underneath. Speculation therefore holds that asperitas clouds might be related to lenticular clouds that form near mountains, or mammatus clouds associated with thunderstorms, or perhaps a foehn—a type of dry downward wind that flows off mountains. Clouds from such a wind called the Canterbury arch stream toward the east coast of New Zealand's South Island. The featured image, taken above Hanmer Springs in Canterbury, New Zealand in 2005, shows great detail partly because sunlight illuminates the undulating clouds from the side.
Image Description: Trees and mountains line the bottom of a landscape image with blue sky visible above. The sky is otherwise dominated by a large and unusual cloud that is brown and gold and has many waves and structures.
Piercing the Skies above Paranal | European Southern Observatory
A large telescope stands in the center of the image, against a stunning backdrop of thousands of stars above Chile’s Atacama Desert. The Milky Way galaxy appears to flow behind the telescope, a river of purple and blue light just to the dome’s left. The sky itself glows slightly green towards the horizon. From the very center of the telescope, four bright orange laser beams are projected ahead into the night sky.
This picture is a majestic portrait of UT4, one of the four 8-meter telescopes of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Framed against the star-filled sky of the Paranal Observatory, this telescope is much more than a passive observer. From within its dome, it pierces the peaceful night with four laser beams.
These lasers are projected from the 4 Laser Guide Star Facility (4LGSF), which UT4 uses to create its own artificial stars in the sky. The lasers create these points of light by exciting sodium atoms in the atmosphere, about 90 km above the ground, causing them to glow. These “stars” then act as guides, and by studying how they are blurred by the atmosphere the telescope learns how to adjust for atmospheric turbulence—the same turbulence that makes every little star twinkle.
The adjustments are made by UT4’s adaptive optics system. This can precisely deform the telescope’s secondary mirror to cancel out atmospheric disturbances measured by the system. Using adaptive optics, a ground-based telescope can take much sharper images than the atmosphere would normally allow—it is almost as good as sending the VLT to space.
Soon, the other three 8-m telescopes of the VLT will be equipped with one laser each. This is part of a series of upgrades of the VLT Interferometer and its GRAVITY+ instrument. This can combine the light of several telescopes to create a huge “virtual” telescope. Another massive eye on the sky, ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), is nearing completion not far from Paranal, and will be equipped with at least 6 lasers, to deliver the sharpest images possible with a ground-based telescope.
Credit: ESO/A. de Burgos Sierra Release Date: April 21, 2025
Globular Star Cluster NGC 6397 in Ara | MPG/ESO Telescope
The globular cluster NGC 6397, located at a distance of approximately 7,800 light-years in the southern constellation Ara within the Milky Way galaxy. It has undergone a "core collapse" and the central area is very dense. It contains about 400,000 stars and its age (based on evolutionary models) is 13,400 ± 800 million years.
NGC 6397 (also known as Caldwell 86), resembles a treasure chest of glittering jewels. Here, the stars are jam-packed together. The stellar density is about a million times greater than in our Sun's stellar neighborhood. The stars are only a few light-weeks apart, while the nearest star to our Sun is over four light-years away. NGC 6397 was discovered by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1752.
This ancient stellar jewelry box glitters with the light from hundreds of thousands of stars. The cluster’s blue stars are near the end of their lives. These stars have used up their hydrogen fuel that makes them shine. Now they are converting helium to energy in their cores. This fuses at a higher temperature and appears blue. The reddish glow is from red giant stars that have consumed their hydrogen fuel and have expanded in size. The myriad small white objects include stars like our Sun.
The photo is a composite of exposures in the B-, V- and I-bands obtained in the frame of the Pilot Stellar Survey with the Wide-Field-Imager (WFI) camera at the 2.2-m ESO/MPG telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory. It was prepared and provided by the ESO Imaging Survey team. The spikes seen at some of the brighter stars are caused by the effect of overexposure (CCD "bleeding").
Black Hole Concentration in Star Cluster NGC 6397: Artist’s Impression | Hubble
Scientists were expecting to find an intermediate-mass black hole at the heart of the globular cluster NGC 6397, but instead they found evidence of a concentration of smaller black holes lurking there. Data from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope have led to the first measurement of the extent of a collection of black holes in a core-collapsed globular cluster.
This animation is an artist’s impression created to visualize the concentration of black holes at the center of NGC 6397. In reality, the small black holes here are far too small for the direct observing capacities of any existing or planned future telescope, including Hubble. It is predicted that this core-collapsed globular cluster could be host to more than 20 black holes.
NGC 6397 sits 7,800 light-years away within the Milky Way galaxy, making it one of the closest globular clusters to Earth in the constellation Ara. This ancient stellar jewelry box glitters with the light from hundreds of thousands of stars. The stars are only a few light-weeks apart, while the nearest star to our Sun is over four light-years away. NGC 6397 was discovered by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1752.
This Hubble Space Telescope view of the core of one of the nearest globular star clusters, called NGC 6397 (also known as Caldwell 86), resembles a treasure chest of glittering jewels. The cluster is located 7,800 light-years away in the constellation Ara within the Milky Way galaxy. Here, the stars are jam-packed together. The stellar density is about a million times greater than in our Sun's stellar neighborhood. The stars are only a few light-weeks apart, while the nearest star to our Sun is over four light-years away. NGC 6397 was discovered by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1752.
This ancient stellar jewelry box glitters with the light from hundreds of thousands of stars. The cluster’s blue stars are near the end of their lives. These stars have used up their hydrogen fuel that makes them shine. Now they are converting helium to energy in their cores. This fuses at a higher temperature and appears blue. The reddish glow is from red giant stars that have consumed their hydrogen fuel and have expanded in size. The myriad small white objects include stars like our Sun.
Credit: NASA/ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)
A Halo above The Earth's Horizon | International Space Station
An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photo while orbiting over the Indian Ocean. The Earth appears black in the lower half of this image, mirroring the darkness of space above. Atmospheric layers span the image, displaying a range of hues. The troposphere generally appears orange and red, the stratosphere is mostly white, and the mesosphere is shades of blue. The Moon, with a shimmering streak-like feature below it, is visible near the top atmospheric layers.
When this photograph was captured on September 4, 2024, the Moon was in the waxing crescent phase. During this phase, only a sliver of the Moon is illuminated by reflected sunlight, visible as the extra-bright white crescent on the Moon’s lower-right edge. Camera settings such as exposure, shutter speed, and aperture increased the visibility of the Moon in this image, giving the impression of a full Moon.
At the time of this photo, the Moon was positioned behind Earth’s atmosphere relative to the space station. The atmosphere acts like a lens, bending light that passes through it and toward the astronaut’s camera, causing the Moon to appear non-uniform in shape.
Bent, or refracted, light also led to another optical phenomenon in this image. Water vapor that reaches high in the atmosphere can freeze onto tiny dust particles, generating ice crystals in the mesosphere. Light refracted by these ice crystals likely formed the arc-shaped partial lunar halo visible near the Moon.
Image Description: The bottom third of the photo is solid black. It is topped by atmospheric layers of orange, red, white, and blue. The Moon is visible near the top of the blue atmospheric, layer where it fades into the blackness of space. Cradling the Moon on its bottom-right side is an arc-shaped strip of white light. A subtle arc, formed by the bending of light through high-altitude ice crystals, cradles the Moon above the darkened Earth.
Image details: Nikon Z9 digital camera using a focal length of 200 millimeters
Image Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center Text Credit: Elysia N. Viengkham, Amentum-JETS II Contract at NASA-JSC Capture Date: Sept. 4, 2024 Release Date: Aug. 17, 2025
Star Tarazed and Dark Nebula "E" Complex in Aquila
Tarazed (Gamma Aquilae) is an orange star, slightly smaller than our Sun, located on the far left. At center is the dark nebula "E"—a complex of opaque nebulae cataloged, from north to south, LDN 700, LDN 964 with a dense core made up of [LM99] L694-2, and LDN 688. The "E" or "Barnard's E" Nebula (officially designated as Barnard 142 and 143) is dominated by a pair of dark nebulae in the Aquila constellation. It is a well-defined dark area of the Milky Way that also features countless stars of all magnitudes, obtaining its name from its resemblance to the letter E in the Latin alphabet. Its size is about that of the full Moon, or roughly 0.5 degrees, and its distance from Earth is estimated at 2,000 light years.
This image was created by composing data obtained from a backyard suburban sky using 250mm f/2.2 telephoto lenses.
Image Credit: Giuseppe Donatiello
Text Credit: Giuseppe Donatiello, Wikipedia Capture Location: Oria, Apulia, Italy Release Date: Aug. 16, 2025
Watch 2025 Perseid Meteor Vaporize in Earth's Atmosphere
"The camera battery died about 2am local time on August 12, while shooting in the bright moonlit skies from a garden in Chastre, Brabant Wallon, Belgium, planet Earth. But not before it captured the frames used to compose this cool animated gif of a brilliant Perseid meteor and a lingering visible trail known as a persistent train. The Perseid meteor, a fast moving speck of dust from the tail of large periodic Comet Swift-Tuttle, was heated to incandescence by ram pressure and vaporized as it flashed through the upper atmosphere at 60 kilometers per second. Compared to the brief flash of the meteor, its wraith-like trail really is persistent. A characteristic of bright meteors, a smoke-like persistent train can often be followed for many minutes wafting in the winds at altitudes of 60 to 90 kilometers."
The Perseids meteor shower peaks in mid-August, and is the most popular meteor shower of the year.
Perseids: Fast Facts
Comet of Origin: 109P/Swift-Tuttle
Radiant Constellation: Perseus
Active: July 17 to Aug. 23, 2025 (Peak night: Aug. 12-13)
Observed Under Dark Skies: About 25 meteors per hour
Shenzhou-20 Astronauts Complete 3rd Spacewalk | China Space Station
During a 6.5-hour spacewalk, Shenzhou-20 astronauts completed vital inspections and installed protective equipment on China's space station, demonstrating improved efficiency in extravehicular operations and collecting crucial thermal data.
The spacewalk on Friday, August 15, 2025, represented the Shenzhou-20 crew's third series of extravehicular activities since boarding the space station.
According to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), crew members Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui, and Wang Jie worked for approximately six-and-a-half hours and completed all related tasks at 22:47 Beijing time, assisted by the space station's robotic arm and a ground control team.
At around 16:00 on Friday, astronaut Chen Dong opened the airlock and stepped out of the Wentian lab module, marking his sixth extravehicular mission and making him the Chinese astronaut with the most spacewalks to date.
Chen was positioned at the end of the station's robotic arm using a newly-installed automated foot restraint, while astronaut Wang Jie remained inside and passed equipment to him. According to space engineers, the restraint made a significant impact on the operations.
"Last time we installed the automated foot restraint for the first time, and this spacewalk was the first time we used it to carry out tasks. It has clearly increased our operational efficiency," said Liang Xiaofeng, an engineer with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
With the robotic arm in motion, Chen was able to inspect external parts of the station with a camera and thermal imager.
At around 16:50, astronaut Wang Jie joined Chen Dong in space. It was Wang's first spacewalk, making him the second Chinese aerospace flight engineer to perform an extravehicular mission. Inside the Tianhe core module, Chen Zhongrui provided vital support.
On the ground, Liang emphasized that the spacewalk has played a role in advancing China's ambitious plans for future space exploration.
"The main goal of this spacewalk was to identify thermal characteristics of key external equipment and critical components. This allows us to better understand their operational conditions and collect detailed data, which also supports future spacecraft design and advancing our thermal control technologies," the space engineer said.
After completing installations of debris protection measures and auxiliary structural components, as well as inspection of external equipment and systems on the station's exterior, Chen Dong and Wang Jie safely returned to the Tianhe core module by 22:47 Beijing time.
The Shenzhou-20 astronauts entered the Tiangong space station on April 25 this year and have now completed half of their spaceflight journey.
Shenzhou-20 Crew
Chen Dong (陈冬) - Commander - Third spaceflight
Chen Zhong Rui (陈中瑞) - Operator - First spaceflight
Wang Jie (王杰) - Flight Engineer - First spaceflight
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