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By Aadil Brar
China News Reporter
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China's Shenzhou-16 landed on Tuesday with a torn parachute as the capsule containing three astronauts wobbled in the air.
The Shenzhou-16 mission capsule landed at the Dongfeng landing site in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on October 31, 2023.
During landing, the mission experienced some difficulty as the video of the landing craft shows a tear in the parachute as the capsule shakes. The video footage shared by Chinese state media also shows a white-colored plume rising from it before landing on the ground.
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The word "Shenzhou" in Chinese means "Divine Vessel," while the astronauts are called "Taikonauts" or "space astronauts."
Xinhua, China's official news agency, said the Shenzhou-16 mission was the "first crewed mission of the application and development stage of China's space station."
The Shenzhou-15 mission landed in roughly the same area in Inner Mongolia on June 3 after taking off from the Jiuquan test site in northwest China on November 29, 2022.
The rapid advances in China's space program is noticeable, as since Shenzhou-12 in 2021, its astronauts have been able to spend 90-180 days in space before returning to Earth. Prior to then, "Taikonauts" would spend around four to 10 days on a mission.
The increased ability to carry out longer, complex space missions coincides with the launch of China's Tiangong space station, permanently stationed in low earth orbit since 2021.
China launched the Shenzhou-17 mission from its Jiuquan test site on October 23 and it reached the Tiangong space station fewer than six and a half hours after leaving the surface.
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Tang Hongbo, one of three astronauts on the Shenzhou-17, became the first to head back to space within two years of his last mission. China has managed to train its personnel at such a rapid speed that crew members Tang Shengjie, aged 33, and Jiang Xinlin, aged 35, are two of its youngest ever astronauts.
The average age of flight crew in Beijing's space program is more than 40 years old.
The U.S. has grown concerned about China's ability to deploy missions at a pace never seen before.
"The pace with which they've been able to put those capabilities in play, and the scale at which they are putting those capabilities, is the most alarming," Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations with the U.S. Space Force, recently told Nikkei Asian Review in a recent interview.
In May, China said it plans to put astronauts on the moon by 2030 while continuing to expand the Tiangong space station.
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