THREE Chinese astronauts returned to Earth today after six months on the Tiangong (“heavenly palace”) space station.

The successful mission, which involved experiments in setting up an aquarium in space, is a further boost to China’s rapidly developing space programme. The country intends to become the second, after the United States, to put a human being on the moon by 2027, and is already the first to have landed a robot on the dark side of the moon.

China completed the Tiangong space station in 2022. It was forced to develop its own station because the United States bans it from using the International Space Station, citing a 2011 law prohibiting any collaboration on space technology with Chinese nationals. The Xinhua news agency reports that China is in discussions on selecting and training astronauts from other countries.

China published a space science development programme last month, setting out plans to explore the atmosphere of Venus and the boundaries of the solar system.