{"id":197525,"date":"2025-11-24T11:53:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T11:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/197525\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T11:53:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T11:53:07","slug":"china-to-launch-shenzhou-22-spacecraft-on-november-25-state-media-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/197525\/","title":{"rendered":"China to launch Shenzhou-22 spacecraft on November 25, state media reports"},"content":{"rendered":"

BEIJING, Nov 24 (Reuters) – China will launch the unmanned Shenzhou-22 spacecraft<\/a> on November 25, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Monday, a move that will help return the country’s space station and manned flight programme to normality after a vessel was damaged in early November.The Shenzhou-22 spacecraft is being sent to China’s space station Tiangong to replace the Shenzhou-21, which was forced to return to Earth six months before schedule after another vessel docked at the station was damaged<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sign up here.<\/a><\/p>\n

The early departure of the Shenzhou-21<\/a> left Tiangong and a trio of Chinese astronauts manning it without a flightworthy vessel for 10 days so far, an unprecedented situation for the space station since it fully began operations in late 2022.<\/p>\n

With the Shenzhou-22 set to remove this risk, it remains to be seen how Chinese space authorities will handle the damaged Shenzhou-20 vessel, which experts have suggested could be undocked from Tiangong and de-orbited over the Pacific.<\/p>\n

The Shenzhou-22 will be launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, state news agency Xinhua reported, as with all other recent Shenzhou missions.<\/p>\n

The key difference with its predecessors is that this launch will be unmanned, a necessary condition to avoid exceeding Tiangong’s ideal capacity of three long-term residents.<\/p>\n

This means that China’s next crewed spaceflight mission, scheduled for around April next year, will likely be the Shenzhou-23.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the month, damage sustained by the Shenzhou-20 led its crew to stay aboard the space station an extra nine days with the newly arrived Shenzhou-21 crew, forcing Tiangong to operate at its maximum capacity of six for longer than usual.<\/p>\n

Reporting by Eduardo Baptista; Editing by Jan Harvey and Louise Heavens<\/p>\n

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab<\/a><\/p>\n

Purchase Licensing Rights<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIJING, Nov 24 (Reuters) – China will launch the unmanned Shenzhou-22 spacecraft on November 25, state broadcaster CCTV…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270],"tags":[82495,82496,2786,82703,53515,82995,82538,82545,82546,83395,82535,82556,82549,82541,82550,82776,82553,83396,82536,84041,83397,83391,83393,83787,82969,82777,82547,82539,82557,82537,82540,82554,82552,85720,83394,82548,82551,85719,83113,82702,18,82578,45748,19,82504,82505,17,82565,83788,82970,83002,17588,82512,133,83126,451,82968,82513,753,82999,30150,84334],"class_list":{"0":"post-197525","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-aer","9":"tag-aero","10":"tag-asia","11":"tag-asxpac","12":"tag-cn","13":"tag-coms","14":"tag-destabx","15":"tag-destafa","16":"tag-destbnx","17":"tag-destc","18":"tag-destcsa","19":"tag-destd","20":"tag-destdnp","21":"tag-deste","22":"tag-destfun","23":"tag-destg","24":"tag-destgns","25":"tag-destgro","26":"tag-destlby","27":"tag-destm","28":"tag-destmtl","29":"tag-desto","30":"tag-destoil","31":"tag-destousscm","32":"tag-destouswdm","33":"tag-destpge","34":"tag-destpsc","35":"tag-destrast","36":"tag-destrbn","37":"tag-destreulb","38":"tag-destrnp","39":"tag-destrws","40":"tag-destrwsa","41":"tag-destseatp","42":"tag-destsof","43":"tag-destu","44":"tag-destucdptest","45":"tag-destz","46":"tag-dli","47":"tag-easia","48":"tag-eire","49":"tag-emrg","50":"tag-gen","51":"tag-ie","52":"tag-indg","53":"tag-inds","54":"tag-ireland","55":"tag-mtpix","56":"tag-packageus-science","57":"tag-packageworld-news","58":"tag-pxp","59":"tag-satcom","60":"tag-sci","61":"tag-science","62":"tag-soci","63":"tag-space","64":"tag-spc","65":"tag-spex","66":"tag-tech","67":"tag-teeq","68":"tag-tmt","69":"tag-topicworld-china-slug"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}